The Gift of Leadership

Croft

• Publisher: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781848258679
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Leadership in Religion

Steven Croft traces the nature and exercise of leadership in the Bible in its record of rulers and prophets. He displays wisdom and insight into human nature and the challenge and privilege of leadership.

1

Beginning

1 Kings 12.1−19

Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king.

(12.1)

Leadership as service

Shechem may seem a strange place to begin this meditation on Christian leadership. We’ve come here because of the story of Rehoboam, son of Solomon. This is the most powerful story in the Bible of how not to begin a new leadership responsibility.

Any life offered to God is punctuated by new beginnings. God calls disciples to new places and new roles. Often these involve leadership. These moments of change are full of potential and also full of risk for the leader and for the community. Much will depend on the way in which a person called into leadership approaches these times of transition. A good beginning can lead to learning and transformation for the whole community. But a bad start can mean disaster.

Rehoboam’s name means ‘expansion of the people’. It’s a name full of irony in view of what happens here. He became king over 900 years before Christ, at the height of Israel’s power and influence as a nation. His grandfather, David, battled all his life to establish a kingdom for the 12 tribes of Israel. His father, Solomon, consolidated David’s reign, built the temple, established the great institutions of Israel and fostered a flourishing Hebrew culture. David and Solomon each reigned for 40 years. The Bible makes it clear that in the latter half of Solomon’s reign all was not well. But how was Rehoboam to make his new beginning? How was he to handle the legacy of his father and grandfather?

The crown prince gets some things right. First, he pays careful attention to place, to story and to ritual, to the deepest traditions of the nation. Rehoboam calls all the people together in special assembly. He holds the gathering at Shechem: the place where Abram built his first altar to the Lord (Genesis 12.6); the place where Joshua renewed the covenant (Joshua 24); the place where Joseph’s bones were buried (Joshua 24.32). This place reminds God’s people of their origins, of God’s covenant and call, of the great figures of the past.

Second, Rehoboam begins his reign by listening to the people and especially by listening to what is wrong in the life of the nation. Outwardly the nation is secure but on the inside there is decay. Repair and renewal are urgently needed. Transition is a key moment to listen to the voices of dissent and to pay attention to the work of rebuilding. A new leader needs to listen well and see clearly. The situation in Israel could have been saved. This is what the people say:

Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you. (12.4)

So far so good. Third, Rehoboam asks for time to consider and in that time he takes advice. This is, once again, a good thing. It is a mark of maturity to know that you need help to understand a situation and to know how to respond to it.

Before we move on to think about Rehoboam’s mistake, pause a moment to reflect on the three things he got right. He paid attention to the history and story of this community and, by implication, to the founding vision of what the nation was called to be. He paid attention to what people said was wrong in the nation at that moment in its life: he looked and listened. He knew he did not have all the answers and he sought advice and sought that advice from different groups of people.

One of the key tasks of leadership is to offer vision for the future. People called to leadership often wonder where to find fresh vision for the future of a church, a school, a charity, a business, a city or country. There is no deeper challenge.

Vision emerges as leaders do exactly what Rehoboam did in moments of transition. First, reflect on the founding values and vision of a community in its traditions, history and ideals. Take people back to where it began, to the roots, and explore them together. Second, reflect on where that community is now and especially on what is not working. Third, reflect on this gap between the ideal and the reality in many different conversations. As we do these three things, fresh vision for the future begins to emerge exactly in the gap between the ideals of the community and the reality. Rehoboam’s story could have been such a strong and powerful beginning.

But that was not to be. Rehoboam seeks his advice in two contrasting places. He takes counsel first with the older men, those who had advised his father, Solomon: ‘How do you advise me to answer this people?’ (12.9). These older men, with nothing to prove, capture the essence of leadership and new beginnings in their answer:

If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants for ever. (12.7)

Anyone called to a new leadership responsibility would do well to take these words and write them on a card. Pin them to your desk, to your computer, to the inside of the office door, to the reading desk of the pulpit, to the inside cover of your iPad: anywhere where you will see them regularly and be reminded of what they mean. The heart of Christian leadership is to be a servant. The word ‘minister’ means servant. If you are a Christian and a leader, your calling is primarily to serve and to speak good words to all the people. Power must be mediated through gentleness and humility if communities are not to fracture. Offering leadership as a servant wins trust, confidence and affection. Offering leadership as a servant translates positional power into the kind of authority which can effect change.

When I became Bishop of Sheffield, I held open meetings in every part of the diocese so that we could begin the process of getting to know one another. At each meeting, I gave a short talk and then the floor was open for questions. These were very wide-ranging and stretching. People didn’t hold back.

I realized part way through the second meeting what was happening. This was my extended interview for the role. I was being put to the test. I’d already been appointed and installed as Bishop. What was at stake wasn’t whether I would continue in the role. What was at stake was whether or not people would take any notice, whether I could win trust, whether the positional leadership of my office could be translated into the kind of authority which can effect change. Most leadership roles bring with them this kind of Shechem moment: the moment of testing and discernment – are we able to trust this person to lead our community forward? Every new beginning will have its time of trial. Those are the moments to remember humility.

Rehoboam then turns to the young men, the ones who have grown up with him and now attend him. They are his contemporaries, his courtiers. They are full of machismo and bravado. They are unseasoned. They are crude. But perhaps they know what Rehoboam wants to hear. The seeds of the nation’s destruction have been sown long ago in the neglect of wisdom in the next generation.

Thus shall you say to this people who spoke to you, “Your father made our yoke heavy but you must lighten it for us”; thus shall you say to them, “My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins. Now whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips but I will discipline you with scorpions.” (12.10)

The story leaves us in suspense for a few moments. We are not told at this point which advice Rehoboam will follow. Will he choose the path of humility, of servant leadership, of winning the trust and hearts of his people? Or will he choose the path of pride, of exerting his position and risk division and alienation?

On the third day Jereboam and all the people return. The king gives his reply. He speaks to them ‘according to the advice of the young men’ (12.14). A plea for mercy is to be answered with greater harshness. This one window when division could be avoided is missed. ‘The king did not listen to the people’ (12.5). According to the storyteller, this is a moment like the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus. Somehow God’s purposes are at work here for good even in the midst of the tragedy which is Rehoboam’s reign.

But we need to be clear that what we are seeing here is a tragedy. Rehoboam sows the wind and reaps the whirlwind. Five sixths of his kingdom is torn away. Civil war will plague succeeding generations. Political division will lead to religious apostasy. The people of Israel will worship golden calves again in the new centres of worship in Bethel and Dan. The fabric of the nation is immeasurably weakened. Two hundred years later, the Assyrians will destroy Jereboam’s northern kingdom and its capital, Samaria, in 722 bc. In 587, Jerusalem itself will be destroyed and Solomon’s Temple with it. There will never again be a strong, united kingdom of Israel, though the dream is one which will animate prophets and poets for generations still to come. That dream will lead eventually to the vision of the king who will come as the true servant to his people, the one who will be gentle and humble of heart, who will give his very life, who will establish the reign of God for all time.

A rare wisdom

Sometimes people talk as though leadership in communities and organizations is easy, as though it can be reduced to hints and tips or five points all beginning with the same letter. Lessons about leadership are made to sound simple. That is not a Christian view. True leadership is difficult and complex. The exercise of leadership will stretch us and test us to the limits of what we can bear.

The Bible and the Christian tradition together form the longest continuous reflection on leadership in communities there has ever been. For well over three thousand years, those called to ministry and leadership have reflected in dialogue on the same texts and stories, and have written new ones as a way of passing on wisdom in leadership from one generation to another. One of the absolutely key insights of this whole long tradition until very recently is that leadership in communities is demanding and difficult.1 There is little that is easy about the exercise of leadership in communities whether you are called to lead in a church, a school, a local authority, a small business or a multinational corporation.

According to the beautiful poem preserved in Job 28, wisdom for leadership is more precious and rare than gold, silver or precious stones that have to be mined from deep in the earth. Gaining that wisdom takes the same effort and engagement. You have to dig deep. It begins with a fear of God and knowledge of yourself before God: in other words, with humility. According to the writings of the Church fathers in the first 600 years of the faith, leadership within the Christian community is more demanding even than leadership in the armed forces, in the medical community or in the government because of the integrity required and because of the demanding calling of seeing imperfect people transformed into the likeness and image of God.

All the more reason then to pay very careful attention to the first months of leadership in a new community. Transition is a complex, vulnerable time for the person called to leadership and to the organization they lead. You may find that you have left behind a role in which you were comfortable, and colleagues you loved dearly. You may have come to a strange new place and a job which feels like you are wearing a ...