(Un)likely Leaders?
by Alec Spencer and Revd Lynne Cullens - September 2021
A roundtable discussion on inclusion and media organised by the Christian Muslim Forum at Lambeth Palace in 2019.
In this creative collaboration, Alec Spencer and Lynne Cullens reflect on the need for culturally bilingual church leaders who can bridge social divisions within and across our diverse and sometimes fragmented communities
KEY VERSE
"For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” 1 (Corinthians 1:26-31)
In the foreword to the GRA:CE report, Archbishop Stephen Cottrell characterises our society as "fractured", noting how "people increasingly only relate to those within their own tribes". He points to our hesitancy both to build and to cross the bridges necessary for the development of our discipleship, through encounter with the other. Such fractures are equally apparent within institutional church structures, which too often reflect the values of the world. That so many in our leadership are wise according to worldly standards, powerful and of noble birth, has inhibited our ability to "hold multiple social perspectives while simultaneously establishing a centre that revolves around fighting against concrete material forms of oppression" (Cantu & Hurtado, 2007, p. 7).
It would seem, to us, vital to our growth - both corporately and as individual disciples - that we become more adept at bridge building, as well as more willing to step onto those bridges created by others.
Corporately, the Church would discover new impetus, greater richness and more missional energy were it to embody and unite - were it to bridge - the breadth of lived experience and identities that are modelled in both our communities and in the leaders whom God calls.
Because God often chooses unlikely leaders in the eyes of the world.
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”, asks Nathaniel in John 1:46
In Jesus Christ, we see the Son of God made man. Jesus is privileged by His relationship with His Father, to whom He is the only son and heir. On earth however, he is low and despised, the 'unlikeliest of leaders, with an unlikely lineage' for leadership, as Nathaniel's question in John 1 so bluntly states. Jesus experiences poverty first-hand and suffers under the brutality of Roman occupation and the Empire’s barbaric notions of justice.
Here we see a duality of poverty and privilege; divine privilege that enables Jesus to be our advocate in Heaven, together with lived experience of poverty and injustice that allow him to speak with such empathy and legitimacy into the lives of those who endure the same.
This duality is perhaps easier to relate to in the life and leadership of Moses. Scripture reveals the complexity of Moses' experience. Brought up as a member of two households, he is nursed by his enslaved mother and then joins the royal household as a son of Pharaoh's daughter.
The Israelites are enslaved, and their lives are bitter. The Egyptians' treatment of them is ruthless. Moses is one of a few baby boys to escape their campaign of genocide. Moses lives between two social systems, two languages, two cultures. He understands experientially the nature of social arrangements at that time and in that place. Surely no one else was better placed to understand the multiple social perspectives in that context.
It is notable that, in living between these two divided households, Moses is comfortable in neither. He identifies with the Israelites as his people. But it is also an Israelite who asks "Who made you a prince and a judge over us?" (Exodus 2:14). When he flees to Midian he is identified as an Egyptian.
It is precisely his experience of living with this dual identity that enables him to exercise such an effective ministry. He is one of the few people able to stand on the bridge between two places. He is able both to navigate the structures of oppression that enslaved and killed, and to identify with and ultimately be identified as a leader by the Israelites.
Duality of identity is a point of true gifting in the exercise of bridging ministries, spawning leaders whose complex lived experiences enable the holding of multiple social perspectives and an ability, in highly fractured contexts, to relate to those beyond their own tribes, bridging fractures that span peoples, communities and even heaven and earth.
And in returning to the Church of the present day, those whom we select and equip to be leaders to speak into our complex and diverse communities, is rightly becoming an area of focus.
So what might we learn from God’s own choice of leaders that might benefit our discernment today? Who does God raise up to build his kingdom?
Often the most unlikely people in the society of the time; the young, the gentiles, the women and the sinners. Selected by God because their lived experiences inspire others, adding insight and rich depth to their witness and journeys of faith.
In God's kingdom, those leaders who are powerful and of noble birth are few. As Church we must seek to correct the long-standing disparity between those whom we have consistently appointed as leaders, and the principles to which scripture points. We must actively choose and equip a new generation of culturally bilingual kingdom leaders if the Church is to bridge social divides, embody the leadership we see in Scripture and facilitate our mutual flourishing.
This necessitates many things.
At the very least, it requires continued reflection on how we break the cycle of privilege, in which leaders are consistently made in the image of their predecessors.
We need to recognise that there is a very real difference between calling and entitlement.
We need to break free too from the Church’s obsession with the academic, which leads to a culture conflating knowledge and wisdom - so that the academically qualified are seen as the wise and, even more worryingly, where only the academically qualified are seen as wise. But the greatest risk is that we confuse worldly ambition and the striving for academic standards with the true purpose and wisdom that comes through loving and walking humbly with God.
In leadership development, there’s a phrase ‘if I can see me, it can be me’. We see all too starkly the effects of that in catalysing the ambitions of the white middle-class in the Church and in drawing them into our churches; but equally, we should in no way dismiss the powerful missional and motivational effect, for communities who have been hitherto excluded, of diversifying our leadership, of their seeing themselves in our leadership and believing that they too can lead.
In every parish, workplace and community, we need leaders who better reflect the makeup of communities in England. In times of great change and challenge, we need humble and courageous leaders who are able to adapt quickly, to take risks and to innovate; leaders who are able to respond with informed and broad-based wisdom; leaders able to sustain a ministry of joy and purpose, in times where the former may feel wholly absent and the latter frustratingly unclear.
Greater diversity in our leadership – especially with regard to class and race - is an essential component of a church that aspires to be humbler and more courageous. And until there is a visible commitment to social and racial justice, confidence in our Church institutions will be weak.
But nonetheless we dare – audaciously and naively - to hope in Jesus that a new group of leaders with hearts for, and lived experience of, bridging social divides, might help the wider Church to discover in practice that “Love’s meaning is not found in sermons or theological textbooks, but rather in the creation of social structures that are not dehumanising and oppressive.” (Cone, 2003, p. 111).
To those who already identify as 'outsiders within', we hope this provides a welcome encouragement to stand firm in the gap between two worlds, however uncomfortable that place might be, facilitating justice by enabling dialogue, connection, enhanced awareness and mutual understanding.
Neither the poor nor the privileged hold the full perspective of Christ. We see ’through a mirror dimly’. We don't have 'God sight'. So in taking up our calling to discern future leaders we pray for the openness of heart to recognise the limits of our own perspective and the opportunity for mutual learning there can be when we step onto the bridge and can meet with those who have very different lived experiences from our own, in participatory spaces where all feel safe and are treated as equals.
References
[1] Cone and Gayraud Wilmore (eds), Black Theology: A Documentary History, Volume 1 1966-1979, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003.
[1] Norma E. Cantu and AidaNorma E. Cantu and Aida Hurtado, Introduction to the Fourth Edition, 'Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza', Fourth edition 2007, Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco CA.
Alec Spencer lives in Chester with his wife Jodie, daughter Robyn and son Isaiah. He works as a carpenter and cabinet maker and volunteers with the Church Urban Fund.
Revd Lynne Cullens is Rector of Stockport and Brinnington and Chair of the National Estate Churches Network. She was a member of the Archbishops' Commission that produced the Coming Home Report and is now involved in the work of their Housing Advisory Group, having a particular focus on local churches and communities. She speaks and blogs on issues of poverty, inequality, leadership and culture.