Sermons

Leadership Development

May 15, 2011
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Acts 2:42-47; John 10:1-10
The Reverend Stephen P. Bauman

I read how a certain corporation paid their top three executives 52 - 56 million dollars each in salary, bonus and stock options, for a total among them of more than one hundred sixty million dollars. A longtime compensation specialist probably expressed the feelings of many when he said breathlessly, “The compensation is beyond breathtaking.” And this was awarded despite the 18 percent drop in the corporation’s share price. A spokesman for the company assured the unenlightened that the reward was not based on the stock price, but on “successful transitioning.” I’m thinking the transitioning must have been extremely successful.

What interests me in this is that evidently some people, the board of directors in particular, must believe the leadership these men offered was worth the price. That’s a reasonable assumption, right? I’m not qualified to weigh in on the details of that analysis. Still, and while not advancing a particular political or economic argument here, I’m left wondering how certain value is placed on leadership. That one can make those stratospheric levels of compensation isn’t my question at the moment. But do you imagine there’s a leader out there who could do at least the same job for say, just ten, or maybe fifteen million? What’s the relationship between a leader, the average worker and investor here? And more importantly, just what is leadership supposed to accomplish anyway?

There are lots of definitions for leadership of course. Among them, Parker Palmer defines a leader as “someone with the power to project either shadow or light onto some part of the world and onto the lives of the people who dwell there. A leader shapes the ethos in which others must live, an ethos as light-filled as heaven or as shadowy as hell. A good leader is intensely aware of the interplay of inner shadow and light, lest the act of leadership do more harm than good.

He continues, “I think, for example, of teachers who create the conditions under which young people must spend so many hours: some shine a light that allows new growth to flourish, while others cast a shadow under which seedlings die. I think of parents who generate similar effects in the lives of their families or of clergy who do the same to entire congregations. I think of corporate CEOs whose daily decisions are driven by inner dynamics but who rarely reflect on those motives or even believe they are real.” [1]

That short description of leadership seems as true as any I’ve read, so long as we acknowledge that specific aptitudes are required for different arenas. One could be a successful CEO and a miserable parent for instance, or vice versa. But in general, distinguishing between those that shine a light versus those that cast a shadow seems a useful, even crucial basic distinction when considering the nature of good leadership.

With Palmer’s definition in mind I imagine that everyone in this room exerts leadership somewhere. Some roles specify this explicitly. Most won’t be compensated in the manner of the corporation I referenced earlier, but no one escapes the logic that as we act in the world, we impact our world, and in the process exert leadership projecting either shadow or light.

There’s a sense in which the Christian faith is all about the training of leaders patterned on the model of our namesake. We say that his voice is the one we’re to follow. His ways are our ways. As our gospel lesson has it, the leadership we practice begins with submission to a certain shepherd who is portrayed as a kind of leader. Submission requires a quality of humility; a willingness to bend our ways to his, which isn’t a terribly sexy definition of leadership I suppose.

We misunderstand if we think this submission is meant to diminish an assertive sense of identity and to suggest a weak-spined advance on our corner of the world. That hardly defines the life of Jesus or the disciples. No, something more elemental is at stake here, something that references the most important matters of all and how these show up in the content of our commitments and the execution of the days of our lives.

In Jesus’ leadership development course he specifies that choosing our teacher is absolutely crucial. He describes it as a matter of paying attention to who we listen to, upon which voice we pattern our lives. In this sense every truly effective leader understands that her leadership is paradoxically fashioned in the classroom of truly effective followership. The old adage of “choose your teachers well” has resonance here.

Now I pastor a church that has many congregants who either think of themselves as leaders or who aspire to leadership of one form or another, be it in the arts, banking, entrepreneurial enterprise, education, religion, law, medicine, or any number of other arenas, large and small, including ones as homely as getting hitched and starting a family. This fact naturally and logically leads me to this question: all you current and would-be leaders, whose is the primary voice that guides you? Taking inventory on this point is a very useful exercise. Who do you listen to and why? And since you’ve walked in here today, where does the voice of the Good Shepherd fit in? Would it have occurred to you to include it in your list? And now that I mention it, does it seem relevant?

When on another occasion this shepherd affirmed that the primary organizing principle of life was to love God with all your heart, soul and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, did the sound of that strike a resonant chord within? And if so, what effect did it, or does it have on the ethos of your leadership? What impact does it have in your dating life, home life, work life, mundane life? How does it impact your value commitments and concern for the welfare of others? Does it help you distinguish between other true and counterfeit voices?

Tom Long tells of attending a dinner where the guest of honor was a church leader from central Europe; the Soviet Union had come apart only months before and the dinner guests were full of questions about the church during the days of the Cold War and the problems it faced today. Long relates the man’s response:

“He spoke slowly, cautiously, at first, measuring his words, weighing their risk, a man unaccustomed to candor among relative strangers. Gradually gaining confidence, he spoke of dramatic shifts in the social and political climate of his region, of the church made strong through hardship and persecution.

“He told about the days under totalitarianism, how the church was officially tolerated but always undermined and repressed, how the clergy were always monitored by secret agents who had infiltrated their ranks. ‘We would have a meeting about some mater of church business,’ he said, ‘knowing for certain that not everyone seated at the table could be trusted; some of the “clergy” present were, in fact, government agents.’ He paused for a moment and then added, ‘But even though these government spies were careful never to betray their true identities, we could always tell who they were..’

“But how?” someone asked.

“‘The voice,’ he replied. ‘The voice. Something in their voices would give them away.’” [2]

They developed an instinct for discerning the true voice from the false.

Friends, as is often the case, the point of this message comes down to something very simple. Very bottom-line. God knows there are thousands of voices filling the air clamoring for our followership. That’s true even for leaders who presume they function quite independently and who take pride in thinking they are autonomous masters of their destiny. Even they have attached themselves to something, call it a voice, that shapes them, which in turn causes them to project an ethos as light-filled as heaven or as shadowy as hell, or as is the case for most us I suppose, a shade in-between.

Presidents and premiers, corporate captains and generals, managers and supervisors, teachers and principals, mothers and fathers, actors and singers and writers, clerics and friends and co-workers—all formed by the voices they listen to and follow. It’s pretty homely wisdom, I suppose, but then, that’s the sort of wisdom we traffic in here. We’re a retail operation that stocks only life essentials.

The fellow depicted in our apse mosaic holds a book open to a page that proclaims, “I am the light of the world.” Stands to reason that listening to his voice inevitably forms us into persons—leaders—of a particular sort, committed to particular light-filled ends. How could it be otherwise? That’s true for us individually and it’s true for us collectively. His voice calls us to be a leadership institution for our city, or perhaps an institute for leadership development. Imagine what this place would be like if we fully, consciously embraced this as our call. Please imagine this.

[1] Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, Jossey-Bass, 1999.
[2] Thomas G. Long, Whispering the Lyrics: Sermons for Lent and Easter, C.S.S. Publishing, 1995.