As he concludes In
the Name of Jesus, Henri Nouwen leaves us with a powerful image: the
leader with outstretched hands, who chooses a life of downward mobility. This
is the image of the praying, vulnerable, trusting leader.
Following his move from
Harvard to a communal life among mentally handicapped people and their
assistants at L’Arche, Nouwen discovered that every day was full of unplanned
events and surprises. He writes, “The people I came to
live with made me aware of the extent to which my leadership was still a desire
to control complex situations, confused emotions, and anxious minds.”
Leadership requires a willingness to be led
Nouwen describes his
discovery that “leadership, for a large part, means to be led . . . I am
learning . . . not just about the pains
and struggles of wounded people, but also about their unique gifts and
grace. They teach me about joy and
peace, love and care and prayer—what I could never have learned in any
academy.”
After reviewing the abuse
of power by Christian leaders in the church over the centuries, he asks: “What makes the temptation of power
so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for
the hard task of love. It seems easier
to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people,
easier to own life than to love life.”
The challenge of Christian leadership in the 21st century
Jesus’ vision of
maturity, Nouwen writes, “is the ability and willingness to be led where you would rather
not go . . . the servant-leader is the leader who is being led to unknown,
undesirable, and painful places. “The way of the Christian
leader is not the way of upward mobility . . . but the way of downward mobility
ending on the cross . . . the downward-moving way of Jesus is the way to the
joy and the peace of God, a joy and peace that is not of this world.”
21st century
Christian leadership “is not a leadership of power and control, but a
leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God,
Jesus Christ, is made manifest.”
The call for real theological reflection
Here, Nouwen affirms the
discipline of theological reflection as an essential component of such a
leader’s life and ministry. “Just as
prayer keeps us connected with the first love and just as confession and
forgiveness keep our ministry communal and mutual, so strenuous theological
reflection will allow us to discern critically where we are being led.” He defines real theological thinking as
thinking with the mind of Christ.
“To be such a leader, it
is essential to be able to discern from moment to moment how God acts in human
history and how the personal, communal, national, and international events that
occur during our lives can make us more and more sensitive to the ways in which
we are led to the cross and through the cross to the resurrection.
“Christian leaders have
the arduous task of responding to personal struggles, family conflicts,
national calamities, and international tensions with an articulate faith in
God’s real presence . . . they have to say no to every form of despair in which
human life is seen as a pure matter of good or bad luck.
“They have to say no to
sentimental attempts to make people develop a spirit of resignation or stoic
indifference in the face of the unavoidability of pain, suffering, and
death. In short, they have to say no to
the secular world and proclaim in unambiguous terms that the incarnation of
God’s Word, through whom all things came into being, has made even the smallest
event of human history into kairos,
that is an opportunity to be led deeper into the heart of Christ.”
Discovering the hidden presence of God
“The Christian leaders of
the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are
trained—through prayer, study, and careful analysis—to manifest the divine
event of God’s saving work in the midst of the seemingly random events of their
time.
“Theological reflection
is reflecting on the painful and joyful realities of every day with the mind of
Jesus and thereby raising human consciousness to the knowledge of God’s gentle
guidance. This is a hard discipline,
since God’s presence is often a hidden presence, a presence that needs to be
discovered.”
Nouwen challenges
seminaries to become centers where people are trained to discern the signs of
the time. We would add local churches,
home groups, and Bible studies as additional settings where women and men can
learn together how to practice spiritual discernment.
“This cannot be just an
intellectual training,” Nouwen writes.
“It requires a deep spiritual formation involving the whole person—body,
mind, and heart . . . to the degree that such formation is being sought for and
realized, there is hope for the church of the twenty-first century.”
By studying the lives and
writings of countless women and men through more than two thousand years of
history, we can encourage one another in the practices that lead to
transformative spiritual formation.
“Jesus sends us out to be
shepherds . . . He asks us to move from a concern for relevance to a life of
prayer, from worries about popularity to communal and mutual ministry, and from
a leadership built on power to a leadership in which we critically discern
where God is leading us and our people” (In
the Name of Jesus, Reflections on Christian Leadership, Crossroad, 1989,
pages 73-93).
