The leader faces
the facts, and this means that the facts must be determined and known. The
leader must know the organization as it is, know its needs as they are, and
face the world as it actually exists. The conscious denial of reality is a
central danger of leadership, and the leader must defend against this
temptation…The leader must be unafraid of data and facts, and he must surround
himself with people who know the information he needs and will give it to him. (p.
61)
Unfortunately, I have met many Christian leaders who welcome illusion, enjoy pseudo-comfort, deny the world as it actually exists, and turn away people who know the information they need.
I despise
and disgust positional leaders who are indeed losers. They are losers because they
who are in leading positions are supposed to lead and empower others but they become
their stumbling block. They are losers because they are supposed to be called
to bless others but they neglect their callings and the callings of others. They
are losers because their stubbornness, stupidity, and spiritual slothfulness minimize
the (spiritual and physical) size of the body of Christ that is made up of different
individuals who are entrusted with varieties of spiritual gifts to build up
this body (Eph. 4:11-12).
The
doctrine of incarnation is fleshy and messy. In the midst of messiness, we get
a glimpse of God’s revelation. No one expects to find God’s revelation in bodily
form. But all the fullness of his deity dwells bodily (Col. 2:9). The truth of
incarnation exposes any human speculation of who God is and what he is supposed
to be like. Whoever has seen the incarnate God has seen God the Father (Jn.
14:8-9). It destroys human fantasy. It deconstructs our construction of the
Towel of Babel. We can’t reach up to God. On the contrary, he reaches down to
us. He reveals himself to us as it is.
It is what it is. To affirm what is
is an incarnational thinking through which we may get a glimpse of God’s
presence, revelation, and glory.
In
Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A
Conversation in Spiritual Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), Eugene
H. Peterson writes:
Popular forms of
spirituality tend to avoid history, at least in its messier aspects, as subject
matter and context for nurturing the soul…
History is
bounded by birth and new birth, by the virgin birth of Jesus and the
resurrection of Jesus—life, life, and more life. But between those two
life-giving moments there is also death, death, and more death. When we are
born we find ourselves in a world in which death and dying are major preoccupations;
when we are born again it is still the same world. History consists of what
happens in this world. History is the accounting we make of the human endeavor.
More often than not it is an accounting of the mess we make of things: brutality,
war, famine, hate, quarrelling, exploitation. History deals with what happens,
what has happened, what is happening and what will happen. It means dealing
with a world where things rarely turn out the way we think they
should…Something is wrong here, dreadfully wrong. We feel it in our bones. The
most conspicuous event in history that arouses within us this spontaneous sense
of violation, of outrageous sacrilege, is the suffering and death of Jesus, a
suffering and death in which eventually we will all find ourselves involved
whether we like it or not. History. (pp. 133-134)
Christian leaders are historical, not ahistorical.
Christian
leaders nurture the souls of others in bodily form.
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