Envy:
A Study In Church Leadership From
An
Alternative, Biblical Vision
Lew Parks
Even upon church
leaders, what First Samuel identifies
as “an evil spirit from the Lord” (envy) sometimes descends. In more benign
doses it might spur emulation, the way good preachers will try to outdo the
great preaching of another. More seriously, envy might register in a variety of
subtle clergy behaviors we collectively read as a “morale problem:” poor
attendance at collegial gatherings, lack of support for programs, and
distancing from leaders. But envy can become much more dangerous than that. It
can rob church leaders of focus, of the ability to receive the work of ministry
as a demanding but absorbing call from God with its own rewards for service
faithfully rendered. And it can be the precursor to more dramatic and
destructive behavior such as infidelity, addictive escape, crime, or
subversion.
This paper is a study of
envy in church leaders from an “alternative, biblical vision.” First it will
argue the case for an “alternative, biblical vision” for church leadership, a
method that draws on three areas of study: Scripture, theology, and secular
leadership studies.1 This positive model is
offered in place of other intentional and accidental approaches to the study
and debate of church leadership prevalent in the contemporary church. It is a
cross- disciplinary exercise. The intention is to create a method that is
neither esoteric nor obtuse, but constructive and user-friendly. To test the
success of this intention, this paper will take up the issue of envy in church
leaders, starting with the scriptural account of Saul’s envy of David in 1
Samuel 18. Will an alternative, biblical vision of church leadership release
synergy around the subject of envy in clergy? Will it contribute to efforts to
reform and renew the practice of church leadership in our day?
Water from Our
Own Wells
For reasons both ancient
and new, the church today has an insatiable appetite for the study of church
leadership. A vast avalanche of books, seminars, videos, and web sites has
swept over the landscape in response to that appetite. Some of it is good and
helpful, but overall much of it is very weak or even misleading in ways that
should trouble the church leaders consuming it.
What we need is church
leadership that drinks deeply from the well of the church’s scriptures. What we
get is church leadership with proof-texts and brazen disregard for the
otherness of the word. What we need is church leadership that connects with the
church’s best knowledge about God the Trinity, about the salvation history of
all creation, and about God’s election of a people. What we get is church
leadership that arrogantly declares the irrelevance of such reflective work as
if it were some odd Victorian scrupulosity. What we need is church leadership
that risks a robust correlation of its scripture and theology with the very
best that secular leadership studies can offer. What we get is church
leadership that congratulates itself for dabbling in secular leadership studies
twice borrowed, church leadership with a preference for simplistic formulas,
catchy buzz words, and inane parables.
The contemporary church
has grown comfortable with Church Leadership Lite, with the plethora of
approaches to church leadership short on biblical and theological integrity and
oblivious to serious leadership study. It is time to fan the flames of a holy
dissatisfaction that will send us searching for a more complete and satisfying
version of church leadership.
Across the continent and
throughout the world, week after week, tens of thousands of church leaders
(ordained and lay) approach the Bible as a significant partner in conversation
for their sermon or lesson preparation. They start from and return to the
immediate ministry settings in which they are immersed, but in between, they
open new vistas of insight through a critical reading of the scriptural text as
unfolded by commentaries, translations, and other tools. When the quality of
that conversation is sound, the harvest is prolific. "The word of God for
the people of God."
What would happen if
those same church leaders engaged in a similar conversation on the subject of
leadership in the church? What if they began to drink deeply from the wells of
the church’s scripture and theology, not exclusively, not uncritically, but as
lively sources for some new thinking on the subject of leadership in the church
today? And what if they had the confidence and curiosity to test the fruits of
that labor against the best in contemporary secular thinking on leadership?
This paper employs
"an alternative, biblical" vision for church leadership to
distinguish it from two other approaches to the subject of leadership in the
church. Against those approaches that uncritically apply the varieties of no-nonsense
contemporary business or management solutions to leadership issues in the
church, it offers the church's book and its theological reflection on that book
as serious resources for approaching those same leadership issues. And against
those approaches that call themselves "biblical," but only use
scripture to illustrate or sanction an agenda obviously imported from other
more or less constructive sources, it offers the Bible as an active, rather
than passive, partner in the church's reflection on leadership. As we will see
with 1 Samuel 18, active partners have a way of keeping us honest and taking
the dialogue to unforeseen places.
Three
disciplines create and sustain the vision of church leadership presented in
this paper. They are presented in a certain logical order, but this is not how
they are experienced in everyday life. An issue of church leadership can arise
in any of the fields of experience and knowledge represented in these three
disciplines. For example, an article on
marketing in the Wall Street Journal might
raise questions about a congregation’s hospitality, that inspire a Bible study
on Matthew 25, that leads to the discovery of some helpful church history on
monastic traditions. A Lenten series on the relational language of Jesus in the
Gospel of John might incur a wade
into the deep waters of the church’s theology of the Trinity, that in turn
inspires new ideas for collegial leadership in the congregation. It is helpful
to think in terms of a hermeneutical circle, where “the partially predetermined
yet open and revisable nature of human understanding”2
regarding church leadership, is played out. New energy for that circle can come
from any direction. All the sources pulling in roughly the same direction
creates a synergy.
First, the study of church leadership should
exercise respect for the church’s sacred scriptures. This
discipline connects us with the one of the Reformation’s greatest gifts to the
church universal, the recovery of scripture properly preached and taught as a
mark of the true church. The drama of an encounter is explicit. The word of the
Lord comes to us extra nos, with a
voice that may confront our prejudgments, our preferences, and the timeworn
comforts of the community’s interpretive traditions.3
The word of the Lord comes to us as an adversary (adversarius noster). “It does not simply confirm or strengthen us
in what we think we are and what we wish to be taken for. It negates our
nature, which has fallen prey to illusion,”4
and then builds it up again in truth.
Most church leaders
have been equipped for this encounter formally. Seminary is a community for
formation that places a high value on the study of many texts of the tradition
because of the value that it places on a careful reading of a central text. At
seminary, future church leaders learn deference to scripture through work in
original languages and the various schools of textual criticism. They learn to
seek the world behind the text, its sources, forms, editorial versions,
and contribution to traditions. They become immersed in the world of the
text by analyzing its literary, structural, narrative, rhetorical, and
canonical elements. And they struggle with the world in front of the text through disciplines of self-awareness:
reader-response criticism, liberationist criticism, feminist and womanist
criticism, postcolonial criticism, and postmodern criticism.5
The
courteous respect for scripture acquired or sharpened in seminary becomes a
lifelong discipline that informs the church leader’s preaching, teaching, and
ministry practice (including the practice of leadership). The church leader
with limited time to work directly in the original languages and schools of
textual criticism still finds a way to build on earlier foundations with the
help of commentaries and study Bibles.
The text before which
this study in church leadership will exercise respect comes from the books of Samuel. These books of the Hebrew Bible
are fecund resources for the study of church leadership for three reasons. (1)
Leadership is a central theme. The first chapters take us right into the heart
of a leadership crisis, the corruption of the present regime of priests (Eli’s
household), and the people of God diffused and passive before their external
threats. The transfer of Israel's leadership to the prophet Samuel is the first
of three major leadership transitions that saturate the story line of these
books. (2) Leadership is presented with an unyielding realism. The voice is one
of historical realism, what commentators identify as a “prophetic edition” of
the work of the deuteronomistic historian.6
In the course of the books of Samuel, Israel has become transformed into a
strong and united nation-state with new economic and political structures, but
those structures and the persons who inhabit them do not escape review and
criticism.7 (3) Leadership is preserved in
narrative richness. The sheer drama
of leadership, its brilliant triumphs and glaring failures, is preserved in
stories that engage the mind and the heart. One of the most significant
characteristics of this stage of the telling Israel’s story is the attention
given to personality.8 In the
books of Samuel we are given full-blown characters whose actions are both
reflective and physical: Samuel, Saul, David, and a supporting cast whose
portraits are drawn with intriguing detail.
Second, the study of church leadership should take
into account the church’s theology in general and its theology of the church
(ecclesiology) in particular. The church is an organism with a
memory, a family system with a history, a corporate culture with a narrative.
The church comes with nearly two millennia of experience in self-awareness and
self-description. It has defended its fidelity to its founder’s intentions and
confessed its deviations. It has struggled to name the “marks of the true
church” and confessed its failure to live up to them. It has invited the Spirit
into its institutional life and confessed the tentativeness of its polity. It
has announced its universal mission and confessed the corrupt expressions of
that mission. The church has both defended the uniqueness of its clergy and
argued for the priesthood of all believers. It has weighed several scenarios
for relating Christ and culture. It has pondered the reformation of its
established forms.
How ironic
and how unfair it is when those who write or talk about church leadership today
choose to ignore the reserves of the church’s self-awareness and
self-description. They view the church as a generic institution and one without
memory. Their fallback comparisons often are drawn from the world of the
contemporary market economy. The doctor diagnoses and treats the patient
without permitting the patient to speak. But this patient can speak! And this
patient has much to offer that may disconfirm the doctor’s diagnosis and
treatment. The church has its own language of vitality and disease. A church
leader who would lead with integrity has no choice but to learn that language
and remain fluent in it.
At a
minimum, the subject of envy in church leaders invites forays into two regions
of the church’s theology. The more generic study of envy as one of the seven
deadly sins, evokes centuries of moral theology expressed in sermons, books,
confessional inventories, poetry, and art. The church’s scriptures, texts like
“love is not envious,” and stories like Cain and Abel, Saul and David, and the
elder brother and the prodigal son,9 are
lifted up and brought into contact with local contexts and contemporary
conversations. The second and more focused study relates envy to the practice
of ministry. Through the centuries, from the earliest monastic rule to the
latest edition of a code of ethics for servant leaders, the church’s theology
has argued for mutual recognition and parity in the journey of shared mission for
church leaders,10 for positive virtues to
counter the vice of envy.
Third, the study of church leadership should have
the courage to attempt a robust correlation of scripture and theology with the
best thinking in secular leadership studies.
The method
of correlation is a tool used by theologians called to a vocation of
apologetics, to defending the relevance of Christian faith to the present age
by showing its deep connections with currents of the present age. The best
known practitioner of the method of correlation in the twentieth century, was
the German American theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965), who correlated the
gospel and culture in a format of question and answer.11
As Tillich
studied the products of culture, it’s visual and literary art, it’s political
movements, and the insights of it’s philosophy, sociology, and psychoanalysis,
he detected certain recurring “existential” questions. He thought these
questions were self-evident and universal. The method of correlation
facilitates the conversation between such questions and the announced claims of
the Christian gospel in a way that shows the interdependence of both, without
canceling the integrity of either. Where
is an ultimate concern worthy of our allegiance? (God above gods) Where is a knowledge that transforms
persons? (Revelation) Where is the
cure to estrangement? (Forgiveness) What
preserves us against the threat of non-being? (Eternal Life and the Kingdom
of God)
Douglas
John Hall argues for adjustments to Tillich’s method of correlation, to make it
more compatible with contemporary experience. Tillich’s existential questions
and gospel answers are presented without contextual sensitivity. They are
formulated too abstractly, lacking a place consciousness. Hall practices
theology from the confessional stance of a twenty-first century North American,
where the questions of existence must be formulated with historical specificity
and where the Christian answers must be delivered in a post-Christian climate.12 How can we make absolute claims for
God in the context of our immediate experience of cultural pluralism? How do we
talk about God after Auschwitz? How do we speak Christian realism when the
prevailing ideology in North America is political-economic optimism? How do we
talk about mission in a climate of post-colonial bitterness? How do we talk
about the image of God when creation is threatened by human domination?13
Although Tillich’s
practice of segregating technical and experiential knowledge would discourage
it,14 Tillich’s method of correlation
invites us to consider the body of secular leadership studies as a product of
culture contributing to the existential questions that call for answers from
the Christian message. Why not invite into the method of correlation the
creative cultural products of longstanding and responsible leadership debates
over trait versus situation, power versus authority, and transactional versus
transforming leadership?15 If Guernica, why not chaos theory applied
to organizations? If Beethoven’s Fifth, why
not Senge’s Fifth Discipline? And why
not anticipate that there is a relevant Christian word in response to the
existential questions that arise from such encounters?
Hall’s refinement of the
method of correlation, invites us to formulate the challenges of leadership
studies with contextual specificity. In particular, Hall’s analysis of the
North American ideology of political-economic optimism offers potential ground
for intense engagement.16 There
are issues of vision and enterprise. There are debates on corporate values and
worldviews. There are arresting case studies in leadership integrity and
lifestyle. They beg for the voice of theological analysis and may be receptive
to the act of theological re-framing.17 Developmental psychology, critics of
capitalism, and theories of social justice have their perspectives on envy too,
that may counter tendencies or address omissions in the theological traditions.
They have a way of calling church leaders back to the mundane and intractable
realities of practice and the subtle or overt influence of the surrounding
culture on those practices.
The Eyes of
Envy
First Samuel 18 is a
worst case scenario of envy, a story of envy that takes root and becomes an
insidious obsession that leads to self-destructive behavior. But it begins so
innocently! Saul, the first king of the people of Israel, sends a young and
promising commander of troops out to battle the Philistine enemies. David is
eminently successful as a soldier and ever more popular with the people. One
day, David and his troops return to Jerusalem after another dramatic victory.
Women from “all the towns of Israel” come out to join the returning troops in a
victory parade. They dance and sing choruses. “Saul has killed his thousands,
and David his ten thousands (18:7).”18
King Saul watches the parade with pleasure until the words of the women’s
chorus rise above the din and become clear. The moment Saul realizes there are
unfavorable distinctions being drawn (Saul’s thousands versus David’s ten
thousands), the pleasure of the moment is lost. The thrill of victory turns to
anger; the celebration of solidarity becomes tainted with suspicion. “So Saul
eyed David from that day on (18:9).”
The “eyes of envy” is
one of those details from the narrative of envy in 1 Samuel 18 that connects
with the church’s traditions of moral theology. It names a behavior that
disrupts social enterprise. It embodies a disease of the soul. In Dante’s Purgatory, for instance, the souls
succumbed to envy sit huddled against the face of a cliff of the fifth terrace
down. Their eyelids are sewn shut with iron threads, “…like falcons newly
caught, whose eyes we stitch to tame their restlessness.”19 It is an exquisitely accurate image of
punishment. No more sharp glances to the left or right to see if other runners
in the race of life are catching up or, worse, threatening to pull ahead. No
more scanning the horizon to see if someone out there has received a prize,
experienced a success, or garnered recognition that, they are certain, more
properly belongs to them. No more obsessing on others’ gains to nurse their
sense of loss, or zooming in on others’ losses to feed their sense of gain.
One of those souls
condemned for “casting envious looks” on others is identified as Sapìa of
Siena, who confesses, “I always reveled in another’s grief, enjoying that more
than my own welfare.”20 She
hated her fellow Sienese and resented her nephew Salvani’s rise to power. Sapìa
is notorious for taking pleasure in the defeat of the Sienese by the
Florentines in the Battle of Colle, in 1269.21
Envious souls like hers carry consuming personal agendas that skew normal
response to bad news and good news alike. Impulses to sympathy and solidarity
are ignored. Even the basic instinct for self-preservation takes second place
to seething resentment. In Sapìa, the sickness is revealed in the way she
reacts to a defeat. In Saul, the same sickness is first revealed in the way he
reacts to a victory.
To Resent Another’s Victory
Michael sits looking
through his old seminary picture directory wistfully. All those bright and
promising young men, most not yet thirty, all but one white, were considered
the hope of the future church. Maybe one or two were trying to escape the draft
for the Vietnam War; but the rest were headed for decades of service as
pastoral leaders in the local church. They would be, in seminary vogue of those
years, “pastoral directors” who would help the “Mainline church” build on its
post World War Two boom.
Of course, they would
have to pay their dues, starting at the bottom rung of the system in small
churches with a dwindling congregation, where the budget was sustained through
a steady stream of oyster dinners and candy Easter egg sales. They would attach
themselves to mentors, successful pastors with wide reputations who had been
proved over the long run. They would offer their services to the denomination’s
boards and causes. It would require endless mind-numbing meetings and compete
with responsibilities back in the local church, but also provide important
connections and occasions for face recognition.
So, slowly, steadily,
cream rises. Like most pastors, Michael could not admit to ambition, but
quietly carried a good enough version of a life dream just the same. He
expected to be serving a mid-sized church by his mid-thirties and a large
church or judicatory position by fifty.
But it didn’t happen
that way. The landscape of the church was changing around him and the
composition of the church’s clergy leadership began to register that change.
The seminaries were equipping and the church was ordaining women, and persons
of other races and ethnic groups, not to mention second career persons. And
denomination officials were singling out promising young persons who were
neither white nor male, as well as skilled second career persons, and placing
them on fast tracks. Somewhere in his mid fifties, Michael realized that those
tracks went past his front door but did not stop there. Again and again he
watched persons barely half his age, with lesser gifts and none of his proven
experience, promoted before him. Michael’s life dream began to dissipate. When
the twice-divorced woman he had nursed to ordination only five years ago was
named to a judicatory post, that life dream all but died.
Michael does not
remember the particular moment when he contrived the plan to persuade some of
the church’s homebound members to assign their financial affairs to him. But he
does remember answering some of those early pangs of guilt with an inner voice
of angry alienation that surprised him. Like a daydream that grows with each
iteration, the bilking scheme became ever more clever and expansive. It was
only a matter of time before the juggling of accounts surpassed Michael’s
ability. He was almost relieved when the whole thing became public and he was
removed from his pastoral office in disgrace. Now Michael sits looking through
his old seminary picture directory and sighs heavily. He wonders what became of
all those bright and promising young white men.
To Revel in Another’s Defeat
Alice heard about
Michael’s fall from grace at a gathering of the denomination’s clergy. The news
both startled and fascinated her, though she was careful to wear a “what a
shame” countenance and join the chorus of regret appropriate to the occasion.
Alice didn’t know Michael personally; only as a successful pastor and as a
member of “the good old boy network.”
Alice blamed that good
old boy network in one guise or another for several of the more unpleasant
experiences of her career. Its members were the gatekeepers who questioned her
call to pastoral leadership: not to service in the church, just leadership.
They were the local church interview committee that told her that of course it
was fine with them if she came to be their pastor but they knew others in the
congregation who would have trouble with a Woman Preacher. Did she really want
to have to work under those conditions? They were the colleagues who were
annoyed at her requests for childcare at clergy meetings. They were the
trustees who advised her to tend to the visits and leave the business of the
church to the businessmen who, by the way, were adamantly opposed to having the
parsonage anywhere else but attached to the church. They were the judicatory
supervisors who said they appreciated her gifts but the congregation she
aspired to would demand someone with more political savvy and leadership
experience.
So Alice watched her
male colleagues go where she could not go or go with an ease she could only
imagine. It was the “goes without saying” decisions that bothered her most. The
battles over the ordination of women may have been won, but the battles for
equal recognition were far from over.26
Anyone who knew Alice’s story would not be surprised at her lack of sympathy
for the career tragedies of her male counterparts. One man’s loss could be another
woman’s opportunity. Alice tried to imagine how she might look in the massive,
elevated pulpit of Michael’s church and liked what she saw.
“An Evil
Spirit from God”
One of the most
troubling details from the narrative of envy in 1 Samuel 18, is the account of
“an evil spirit from God” rushing upon and seizing Saul (18:9-10). Saul becomes
a raving madman. He picks up a spear and goes after the unsuspecting David who
is occupied playing the lyre. Saul intends to pin him to the wall. An “evil
spirit from God?”
The books of Samuel are
absorbed with the interface of human freedom and the divine will. It is clear
that God is in final control behind the human drama, God’s final purposes will
not be thwarted, and God is capable of direct intervention. It is also apparent
that one of the contributions of these books to the canon is a novel emphasis
on human cooperation: God’s will is usually accomplished indirectly
through human events and personalities.27
Saul is an intriguing
study standing somewhere between the old and the new dispensations of this
theological anthropology. Some of the defining moments of his life and several
of the developing characteristics seem beyond his control. His call to
leadership, for instance, comes out of the blue from a “seer” he consults about
some lost donkeys. Saul’s first response to Samuel’s summons to a higher
mission is to raise objections (9:21). Saul’s intimate relationships, including
those with his adult children Michal and Jonathan, seem fated to an
irreversible estrangement. At the same time, the interloper David comes into
Saul’s domain and steals the heart of Jonathan, Michal, Saul’s attendants, and
“all Israel and Judah” (18:1, 16, 20, 22, 28). As the years go by, the bad
decisions, out-of-control behavior, and personal distancing begin to coalesce
into the energy of a downward spiral. On the eve of the battle that will mark
the end his life, Saul reverts to the pagan practices he once outlawed. In
desperation he seeks the council of a necromancer to fill the void left by the
silence of God (28:3-25).
So was Saul fated to the
envy of David that became a murderous obsession? Was he a pawn in the hands of
an evil spirit from God? The consensus of biblical scholarship past and present
is that Saul must bear responsibility for both the final misery of his vocation
and a string of poor decisions along the way.28
The story could have, should have, turned out differently. But that consensus
also recognizes the complexity of the stories of Saul, a complexity signaled in
the envy narrative by the report of the descent of the evil spirit. The evil
spirit may express a divine resignation to the direction Saul is taking. It may
express a divine complicity that brings closure to Saul’s reign and clears the
way for David’s leadership.29 It
certainly points to moments in Saul’s life when the power for conscious
decisions was diminished and he was subject to emotional hijacking.
First Samuel 18 is more
than a morality tale, a warning to not repeat Saul’s mistake. There is a
recognition that envy is not only about what the loser does in losing or the
winner does in winning but about the mystery of larger forces that encompasses
them both. The story is laced from beginning to end with uncontrollable
elements, surprising turns, and interwoven destinies. Why does God seem to
smile on the work of one leader and not or not as much on the work of another?
What is this force that comes between leaders, unraveling their solidarity and
handicapping their common cause? Why is it so hard for leaders to bless the
lives they have been given rather than curse the ones they haven’t? What
invisible barrier prevents them from taking pleasure in the good that comes to
another?
The text pushes us to a less moralistic, less
voluntaristic, reading of envy. This means the text may force us beyond the
present mainstays of the church’s moral theology and its theology for the
practice of ministry in search of broader perspectives on envy. Three
illustrations from the repertoire available might help.
Donald Capps casts
the church’s tradition of the seven deadly sins as developmental issues, by
relating them to Erik Erikson’s eight stages of the life cycle. He associates
envy with the developmental struggle of elementary school age (five to twelve);
industry versus inferiority. At this stage children have a heightened sense of
inferiority, some of it related to inadequate resolution of earlier conflicts,
some to lack of preparation for school life, and some to the novel reality of
classmates with superior academic, athletic, or social skills. The critical
need for a child at this stage is to find self-expression that builds
self-confidence. The danger is that the envious person then (or later in life)
will become immobilized for healthy ambition by an overriding sense of
inferiority.30
Henry Fairlie draws
attention to the role of capitalism in creating and sustaining a culture of
envy. First comes the pervasive advertising that attempts to generate needs and
the expectation of fulfilling those needs. Then comes the subversive reduction
of individual worth to ownership, the child of God or citizen reconstituted as
“the consumer.” And finally add the agitating awareness that other consumers
have what we do not. The stage is set for the sideward glance of envy that is
both self-meaning, in that it allows itself to be measured from such a limited
perspective, and destructive of the social order because it sacrifices civic
pride to competition.31
John Rawls views envy
as an important barometer of the level of justice that prevails in a given
society. How a society permits or compensates for differences in opportunity
will determine the amount of envy it unleashes. Envy is a collective issue. “We
envy persons whose situation is superior to ours (estimated by some agreed
index of goods as noted above) and we are willing to deprive them of their
greater benefits even if it is necessary to give up something ourselves. When
others are aware of our envy, they may become jealous of their better
circumstances and anxious to take precautions against the hostile acts to which
our envy makes us prone.” Social institutions can make social discrepancy more
pronounced or not. Social institutions can address the original favored
circumstances of some over others or not. A well-ordered society will
mitigate envy.32
Could
the church be such a well-ordered society where leaders like Michael and Alice
discover a connection that supercedes their temptations to resent another’s
victory or revel in another’s defeat? Could Michael come to acknowledge the
lift of white male privilege in his career to date? Could Alice look for the
human face behind the “good old boy” label? Could they find common cause
against evil spirits of envy that overrun the individual’s power to resist? Is
there a higher ground where the colors of Michael’s and Alice’s respective
life-dreams bleed into one?
The final solution to
envy is not an asylum where each of the inmates is lost in private fantasy. The
final solution is a thriving community where those who live out their inner narratives
“before God” ultimately experience community because God is one and God is able
to orchestrate the unique energy of each individual’s experience of providence.
The reign of God is a party where the elder brother of the prodigal son does in
fact go inside and join the revelry (Lk 15:11-32).33 But on the way to that community, hard
questions of social recognition, equal opportunity, and structures of
competition must be asked continually.34
They must be addressed by all church leaders, but especially by those called to
judicatory positions with more power to intervene in the corporate culture. The
contribution of secular leadership studies to this intervention should not be
overlooked. Sometimes the biggest obstacle to just community in the church is
its own tendency to religious mystification of the issues.35
Concentration
Is
there any point where Saul’s downward spiral of envy could have been checked?
Granted that the sideward glances, the tendency to slant the truth of events,
the bouts of cancerous paranoia all have a way of adding up to a point of no
return, were there opportunities for Saul to chose an alternate destiny before
that point is reached? First Samuel offers glimpses of three such
opportunities. First, there is Saul’s response to the healing power of music
(16:14-23). At least for the time that Saul surrenders to the melody of the
lyre he is lifted above his brooding obsessions. The identity of the lyre
player, David, will soon close that door. Second, there is the witness of
Saul’s adult children. Michal actively intervenes to save David from her
father’s murderous envy (19:11-17) and Jonathan becomes an active advocate for
David in his father’s presence (19:1-7). Yet Saul seems incapable of receiving
these words and deeds as if from grown-ups worthy of respect. And third, after
Saul’s envy has forced David to become a fugitive on the run, there are
episodes where David overtakes Saul unaware, has the opportunity to kill him,
but spares his life (24:1-22). After one occasion Saul even seems to have a
conversion: “Now I know that you shall surely be king, and that the kingdom of
Israel shall be established in your hand (24:20).” But the change of heart is
short-lived.
Nothing seems to break
the spell. Saul becomes so mesmerized by David’s good fortunes that he suffers
a fundamental loss of concentration. He forgets the unmerited favor of God that
smiled on him as a youth. He develops a convenient blindness toward the
everyday faithfulness of God and others, the background grace that provides
lift to his life. He misses cues and loses his place in the unfolding script of
what God intends to do in forming a people to be a blessing to the nations. He
forfeits playful trust and surrenders step by step to a brooding obsession
until the obsession proves his undoing. By the end of the story Saul has become
an evil man and the exercise of responsible leadership has shifted to David.
Bruce Birch reminds us that even then Saul had the residual freedom to allow
the throne to pass to David peaceably but chose the path of bitterness and
violence.36
So first things first:
leaders must attend to the good enough life stories in which they find
themselves and concentrate on the projects they have been given. To put it that
way, the way of biblical realism rather than the way of the self-help brand of
leadership with its entrepreneurial formulas, is to acknowledge that there are
always elements beyond personal control. Creation is good and trustworthy but
seasoned liberally with contingencies, or events that “may occur but [are] not
likely or intended….”37 A
sudden turn of health cuts short one person’s career but opens a door of
opportunity for someone else. The winds of political climate shift making a
certain style of leadership unseasonable and another very appealing. Sweeping
currents of history overwhelm best-laid plans. A multinational corporation with
headquarters in a far away place decides to close the factory that is the
economic lifeline of the community and suddenly fifty percent of the church members
are unemployed. The pastoral leader steeped in church growth must begin to
ponder questions of institutional survival and triage.
Some of the things that
are experienced as beyond personal control can and should be addressed like
inequities of opportunity or the pervasive impact of a culture of honor and
shame. But even here the benefit is often oblique to the effort. The pastor who
devotes her energies to helping women break through the glass ceiling of
leadership may only get to watch the victory at a distance. The judicatory
leader who tries to revive a collegial spirit among mugwump clergy may not see
the harvest until his generation leaves the field in retirement.
Leadership is lived out
in this setting. The ebb and flow of leadership credibility is experienced in
this setting. The comedic rise of dark horses and tragic fall of shining stars
are played out in this setting. David comes along, bright, young, politically
attractive, and the fickle spotlight of public attention strays from Saul. And
in this setting the leader, more often a Saul than a David, must turn to the
work he or she has been given. It is a discipline of concentration.
Keeping a journal of
some sort helps, even if only a calendar with brief annotations. It is a way of
separating the moments of time allowing some to stand above others. A record of
the past helps to connect the dots, and helps to uncover an overarching meaning
among discrete actions and experiences. Against the seasons of the year and the
seasons of the liturgical calendar the leader discerns a direction or at least
a next step. It is Lent, a time to work in the language of self-abandonment and
the cross, a time to pray, “not as I will, but as you will.” The leader
gradually concludes it is time to leave behind a congregation that seems
resistant to his every initiative.
It is Advent, and the
pastor who is herself “great with child” finds new dimensions of hope in the
scripture she opens for her lethargic congregation as together they slouch
toward Bethlehem. Pastoral leaders reach conviction over a “month of Sundays,”
internalize the highs and lows of seasonal church attendance, and seek Easter
in their marriages and careers.38 And
when they slow down long enough to look back, they sense direction. Something’s happening; there is
movement!
But the kind of
concentration that overcomes the temptation to envy must have a forward
dimension too. A church leader must have the confidence to dramatize his or
her present life. The confidence
issue is that a particular life does matter even in the grand scheme of things.
The pastor who routinely reminds parishioners that the hairs of their head are
numbered and no prayer is too small must take the healing medicine he
prescribes for others. There is a point where a leader must insist that the
story he is living, however embryonic, amateur, or common by others’ standards,
is “good enough.” It deserves attention.
In that story she is the
main character sharing the stage with a cast of interesting characters, some of
them saints or villains, most in between. Plots and sub-plots with interesting
twists arise. Who knows from where, they just do.39 In these plots there are painful
setbacks and every once in awhile, clear victories inducing joy. This daily
inner narration takes place in front of an imagined audience: God, spouse,
closest colleagues, or revered mentor. Sometimes it spills out in the open as
when the leader lost in the reverie of that narration emits a loud “yes!” as if
out of the blue. Most of the time it is kept in check, a quiet source of energy
to be shared with a select few. In the same way that church leaders must
protect the “soul of the congregation” against unfair comparisons to some Real
Church as described by theologians, consultants, or bureaucrats,40 church leaders must protect their
souls, this daily inner narrative, from flippant devaluation by the same groups
or by anyone else.
The playful use of
management language fuels this exercise of imagination. The heroic vision of
the manager as one who “works at an unrelenting pace,” engages in activities
“characterized by brevity, variety, and discontinuity,” and is oriented more
toward action than toward reflective activities, legitimizes the church
leader’s pace. The pragmatism of good managers, their sensitivity to context,
their adaptability, their focus on outcomes, and their openness to uncertainty
validates the church leader’s attention to naming issues, articulating goals,
and celebrating incremental successes however small.41 Of course church leaders live and die
by attendance and giving figures! Of course they borrow freely and loosely from
the metaphors of the market economy to describe their work. Those who criticize
them for this practice often underestimate a healthy church leader’s capacity
for play in analogies.
Even upon church
leaders, what First Samuel identifies
as “an evil spirit from the Lord” (envy) sometimes descends. But the case study
of Saul’s descent contains glimmers of alternative endings, and Dante’s envious
soul is in Purgatory, not Inferno. There is hope. On the way to God’s preferred
future church leaders can choose to invest in the stories where they find
themselves. They can live out the dramas they have been given. Occasional use
of blinders to the fortunes of others cannot be ruled out. Concentration is
everything. To paraphrase Rebbe Zusia in the Hasidic tale, on the Day of
Judgment Saul will not be asked why he was not David. He will be asked only why
he was not Saul.42
Bibliography
Alihieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy Volume II: Purgatory.
Translation with Introduction, Notes,
and Commentary by
Mark Musa. New York: Penguin Classics, 1985.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language, Third Edition. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company,
1992.
Bass, Bernard M. Bass & Stogdill’s Handbook of
Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial
Applications, Third Edition. New York: Free Press, 1990.
Baxter, Richard. The Reformed Pastor. Edited with an
Introduction by John T. Wilkinson.
London: Epworth
Press, 1939.
Birch, Bruce C. The Books of First and Second Samuel,
The New Interpreter's Bible, Volume II.
Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1998.
Capps, Donald. Deadly Sins and Saving Virtues. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987.
Chrysostom, St. John. Six Books on the Priesthood. Translated
with an Introduction by Graham
Neville. Crestwood,
New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977.
Ebeling, Gerhard. Introduction to a Theological Theory of
Language. Translated by R. A. Wilson.
Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1973.
Emory, Robert. History of the Discipline of the Methodist
Episcopal Church. Revised by W. P.
Strickland. New York:
Carlton and Porter, 1857.
Fairlie, Henry. The Seven Deadly Sins Today. Drawings by
Vint Lawrence. Notre Dame:
University of Notre
Dame Press, 1978.
Frank, Thomas Edward. The
Soul of the Congregation: An Invitation to Congregational Reflection.
Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000.
Hall, Douglas John. Confessing the Faith: Christian Theology in
a North American Context.
Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1996.
_____. Professing the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1993.
_____. Thinking the Faith: Christian Theology in a
North American Context. Minneapolis:
Augsburg, 1989;
Fortress, 1991.
Harmon, Nolan B. Ministerial Ethics and Etiquette, Second
Revised Edition. Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1987.
Harvard Business Review on Leadership. Harvard Business School
Paperback Series. Boston:
Harvard Business
School Press, 1998.
Harvard Business Review on Managing Diversity. Harvard Business School
Paperback Series.
Boston: Harvard
Business School Press, 2002.
Hays, Richard B. The Moral Vision of the New Testament:
Community, Cross, New Creation: A
Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco,
1996.
Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing
and Life. New York: Pantheon Books,
1994; Anchor Books
Edition, 1995.
Meeks, M. Douglas. God the Economist: the Doctrine of God and
Political Economy. Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1989.
Neuger, Christie Cozad. The Arts in Ministry: Feminist-Womanist
Approaches. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox
Press, 1996.
New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. USA: The Division of Christian
Education of the
National Council of
the Churches of Christ in the USA, 1989.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice, Revised Edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard
University Press,
1971; Belknap Press Revised Edition, 1999.
The Rule of Saint Benedict. Translated
with Introduction and Notes by Anthony C. Meisel and
M. L. del Mastro. New
York: Doubleday Image Books, 1975.
Schnase, Robert. Ambition in Ministry: Our Spiritual Struggle
with Success, Achievement, and
Competition. Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1993.
Soulen, Richard N. and R. Kendall
Soulen. Handbook of Biblical Criticism,
Third Edition.
Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.
Stookey, Laurence Hull. Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church. Nashville: Abingdon, 1996.
Taylor,
Jeremy. The Rule and Exercises of Holy
Dying, A New Edition. London:
Rivingtons, 1880.
Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology: Three Volumes in One. New York: Harper & Row; Evanston:
University of Chicago
Press, 1967.
Trull, Joe E., and James E.
Carter. Ministerial Ethics: Being a Good
Minister in a Not-So-Good
World. N.p.: Broadman & Holman,
1993.
Wiesel, Elie. Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of
Hasidic Masters. Translated by Marion Wiesel.
New York: Summit
Books, 1972.
Willhauck, Susan and Jacqulyn
Thorpe. The Web of Women’s Leadership:
Recasting Congregational
Ministry. Nashville:
Abingdon, 2001.