6 Practices: Week 2 - Leading

Isaiah 43:1-7

Acts 8:14-17

We’re talking about practices or behaviors that can move us forward in life.  Last week we began with the practice of paying attention.  This week we turn to the practice of leading well and following well.

Some of you will be yawning already.  In our culture, there is way too much talk about “leading” and “leadership.”  Bookshelves are crammed with advice for leaders.  Businesses and organizations are awash in leadership seminars.  We might be tempted to conclude that with all this non-stop leadership stuff, we’ve got plenty of great leaders.  But that’s the thing.  We don’t.  We need better leadership.  At almost every level, we are hungry for someone to lead with excellence. 

 

Part of our skepticism about leading and leadership comes from the fact that we’ve all experienced so many selfish, foolish, fake leaders.  We’ve all had the experience of having to follow someone who only pretended to serve the best interests of the larger group or community.  Actually, they were full of themselves.  And everything they did as a leader had the function of padding their resume or making them look good or winning them praise and promotions.  From these kinds of people, there is always brashness, bluster, and fervent activity.  But little depth.  And little clarity about meaning, significance, mutual respect, and shared responsibility.

As essayist David Foster Wallace puts it, we Americans are cynical about leadership because we’ve seen so many salemen posturing as leaders.  We’re used to people pretending to lead, but in essence only wanting something from us that will benefit themselves.  We read only a small part of Acts 8 this morning, but if you look at the wider story, it’s a story about selfish leadership as practiced by Simon the Magician.  And about a new kind of leading practiced by Philip, Peter, and John.

But one reason we can’t give in to our cynicism about leadership is that leading is part of life.  It’s part of the ordering and well-being of our everyday lives.  It happens at every conceivable level: young children at play or at work on a collaborative art project; meal preparation; household management; raising children; coaching a team; leading a meeting; politics and policy making, project leadership, and on and on.  And here’s the thing: in every single sphere of life, wise leadership is always a wonderful gift.  It makes life better.  It solves problems and creates an atmosphere of “we can do this”; problems are seen as temporary challenges, and not permanent failures.  It encourages wide participation in shared work.

And let me say up front, it’s not very helpful to immediately begin sorting the world into separate categories of “leaders” and “followers.”  In order for us to be the people God is calling us to be, all of us will need the flexibility to imagine ourselves as both “leader” and “follower.” 

Our reading from Acts suggests three things about the practice of leading.

Good leadership is flexible leadership.

Now in terms of how we talk together as people of faith, we confess that God’s Spirit leads and we follow.  We live our lives “open” to the guidance of the powerful love of the Spirit that circulates in and among us.  When you translate that openness into leadership terms, you talk about “flexibility.”

This story in Acts raises some questions.  Philip baptized the Samaritans, and yet the Spirit was bestowed later when Peter and John arrived and laid hands on them.  Why was Philip’s baptism not enough?  Was something wrong with Philip as a leader?  Was something wrong with the Samaritans themselves?  Luke, the writer of Acts, doesn’t seem all that interested in the precise order of how things happen.  In Acts, God sometimes gives the Spirit before baptism, sometimes it accompanies baptism, and here it comes later.  It isn’t a predictable process.  The important thing isn’t the order, but that all these things go together: preaching, repentance, baptism, forgiveness, and Holy Spirit.

The life of faith is a complex thing, and it unfolds in different ways for different people.  We need leaders who are flexible enough to direct traffic even when all of us bring different experiences and expectations to the table.  We need leaders who know and share their own stories but don’t force everyone else into a preconceived mold.  Different people will have different paths and experiences.  And we need leaders who honor these various journeys, affirm people’s different paths, and invite them to go further, to grow from wherever they are right now. 

Good leadership is shared leadership.

Today, we released some of our leaders from their active service as deacons and elders.  We do that so that they can rest.  We also do that in order to protect them from the temptation of believing that the congregation will fall apart without them in that role.

And behind them – in their places - we ordain and install new leaders for the next three years.  We do this every year.  And the significance of this model of leadership is important.  We take turns leading so that the variety of our gifts and perspectives can be put into play. 

Our model of ministry is that all leadership is shared.  And in that shared leadership model there is a collegial and collaborative dynamic at work.  I bring my gifts, passions, talents, capacities and experience to the table.  But I do so in a posture of humility, knowing that I am part of a team of leaders.  Where I am weak, or inexperienced, or biased, others will be present by the Spirit’s wisdom to provide what I lack. 

And in our congregation, women and men share leadership together.  We take seriously Galatians 3:28 – “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  We believe that this message of equality and inclusion is the heart of the gospel.  It speaks to us more clearly than do other passages that seem to call into question the gifts of women, those of a different ethnic group or color, those who are poor or those marginalized in some other way.

We asked them to confess their faith in response to several questions.  My favorite is the final constitutional question, “Will you seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?”  This question makes clear that leading is a way of serving others, and so will entail sacrifices for the good of others.  But it also makes clear that good leadership calls us to bring our very best to the task.

We laid our hands on these new leaders, and asked for God’s blessing.  This laying on of hands is an ancient tradition.  We see it practiced in the very earliest years of the church’s mission.  When the believers in Samaria received the good news and were baptized, Peter and John went to them from Jerusalem and laid hands on them.  This symbolic act is a form of blessing.  And it is the opposite of violence.  The gesture is a way of sharing leadership, sharing the Spirit poured out by God.

Finally, good leadership takes risks.

Leading well does not mean taking charge because nothing else is happening.  Leading well means listening and watching for the Spirit’s surprising movement and then turning our sails in that direction.  God’s Spirit is always out in front of us, opening doors, turning corners, shifting course, and crossing boundaries.  That’s what the Spirit does in Acts 8.  The Samaritans were rivals and competitors with Jews.  Each group looked with disdain upon the other.  They didn’t invite one another over for dinner.

And yet in this story, Philip leads by taking risks.  He forms relationships with the villages in Samaria.  He tells them the good news of God’s love and power.  And they open their lives to receive it.  Peter and John, apostles from Jerusalem, then come, not to redo what Philip has done, not to rebaptize or preach it a slightly different way.  Instead they confirm Philip’s work by laying hands on the Samaritans, who then receive the Spirit. 

We need our leaders to call us to take risks and expand the range of who we serve.  The story from Acts 8 is surprising because Jewish followers of Jesus widen the scope of who can be part of their new family.  This is real leadership – seeing possibilities out beyond the narrow-mindedness that has become common sense and accepted practice.  It was risky and gutsy to expand the mission into Samaria.  It took courage.  So who are we missing?  Who’s not here?  And why aren’t they here?  Perhaps we’ve gotten a little too comfortable with those who find their way to us.  Perhaps we need our leaders to provoke and prompt us to courageous ministry that includes those who haven’t yet been included.

Deacons, we need you to live and lead with passion and compassion.  Call all of us back to the selfless path of serving others that is Jesus’ way of life.  Model for us and provide opportunities for us to provide care and healing for those in need.  Keep the poor, the sick, the friendless, the widow and orphan, at the center of our lives together.  Never let us slide into being a community of the smart, the well to do, the well connected, the in-crowd.

Elders, guide our common life into new paths of faithfulness.  This congregation has been loving God and neighbor for a long time.  Help us figure out how to structure our life so that we can be a vibrant community of faith for the next generation.  Make sure our everyday motivation is joy and gladness, not fear and anxiety.  Help us relate to all other fellowships and congregations as friends and not as competitors.  Make sure we live generously and humbly.  Articulate high expectations for excellence and creativity in all areas of our shared life and ministry.  Help us develop a vision for excellent worship, excellent outreach, excellent youth ministry, excellent care, excellent formation and education.

We will follow you with creativity, energy, and gladness.  Amen.