Three Temptations of Jesus - Relevancy, Spectacular, Powerful

Henri Nouwen writes in his book In the Name of Jesus there are three temptations Jesus faces in the desert with Satan. He frames them as:

Jesus is the leader, we are followers  -  Photo by Kevar Whilby on Unsplash

• Relevancy - turning stones into bread
• Spectacular - leaping off the temple
• Powerful - bowing to satan

Why is power a temptation? Nouwen mentions one of the great mysteries of leadership when he says, "leadership, for a large part, means to be led." Christians are called to follow Jesus, not lead him. Christian leaders are those who show others how to follow properly. 

For the largest part of the Christian tradition, too many leaders fall for the temptation of power for noble reasons. Nouwen says, "We keep hearing from others, as well as saying to ourselves, that having power - provided it is used in the service of God and your fellow human being - is a good thing." Then he is quick to point out that this is the same rationalization for the Crusades, enslaving native people, the inquisition, opulent buildings, etc. 

The most cutting critique of power Nouwen makes is that "power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love." It seems it is easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than love life. Jesus asks, 'Do you love me?' We ask, 'can we sit at your right hand and your left hand in your Kingdom?'"

Rather than upward mobility, Nouwen echos other thinkers as he promotes downward mobility leadership. It is "leadership in which power is constantly abandoned in favor of love." 

Stop Expecting Elected Officials to Lead

We talk about the office of the President as a position that leads the American people. And then, every four years we are disenchanted with the leadership provided. We talk about blowing up the whole thing and throw the bums out. We say we want leaders in the offices we elect people into, but it is worth remembering that in a democracy, elected officials are not leaders in the way we might think, and they never have been. 

The reality is that elected officials are not leaders because they cannot be. That is not what an elected official is elected to do. Leadership and elected office are related but only loosely. Perhaps the words of the late great Mitch Hedburg are helpful here:

When you're in Hollywood and you're a comedian, everybody wants you to do other things. All right, you're a stand-up comedian, can you write us a script? That's not fair. That's like if I worked hard to become a cook, and I'm a really good cook, they'd say, "OK, you're a cook. Can you farm?" 

Cooking and farming are related only in that they both work with food, but these jobs require a different skill set.

So if elected officials are not leaders, what are they? Fine tuned followers.

They follow the wills of their constituents. They can only get into office if they do just that. There is a reason that a prophet (a leader) is not elected to be Ruler of the Land. So do not forget that any elected official is not leading but reflecting back a large group of people. You can hate the elected official if you want to, but do not forget that they are only a proxy for a much larger group. Are we willing to hate large groups of people represented by an elected official?

If we are looking to the elected officials to be leaders, I might suggest we look elsewhere.

What is Missing in All This Talk About Leadership in the #UMC

Jonathan Haidt's fantastic book, The Righteous Mind, touches on a number of things related to moral foundations theory which is what made this book so helpful for me. However, this post is to point out one of the minor points of the book: leadership. Specifically he says that if we want to take advantage of the "hivish nature" of human groups so to accomplish great things (like that of honey bees) then we need to stop focusing so much on leadership. 

He goes on to cite other thinkers who say leadership can only be understood as the complement of "followership" (something I made note of here). And not only is leadership one half of the formula, it is not even the most interesting half: "it's no puzzle to understand why people want to lead. The real puzzle is why people are willing to follow." 

Haidt makes the distinction that there are at least two types of leadership styles: Transactional and Transformational. And each has a place in an organization. Transactional leadership uses a a combination of sticks and carrots to incentive followers to a specific action. This style of leadership is helpful when quick, short term action is needed. The drawback of transactional leadership is twofold. First, workers focus on looking good to get a promotion, a higher pay grade or greater prestige. Second, leaders have to monitor workers closely and have costly enforcement mechanisms. If you want people to build a boat then train people to be builders, cut checks and those who are better boat builders will work harder and "move up" into supervision and management. But you don't know who is a good worker and who is a slacker so you have to have metrics and tools to assess each worker and then judge them accordingly.

On the other hand, there is transformational leadership which uses bonds of social capital, pride and loyalty to energize workers. Then you have to trust your workers to do their job, which requires less monitoring than transactional leadership is comfortable with (which some would identify as a drawback to this model). So if you want to build a boat, you don't have to teach people to be builders but only to long for the ocean. 

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Leadership is not only a hot topic in the business world, but we have a bit of a leadership fascination in the UMC. Recently I shared about the "Clashing Shepards" in the UMC, what seems to be missing in all this talk about leadership is the type of leadership we need is one that take seriously followership. If people are following because of sticks and carrots then you know that leader is short sighted. If people are following because of trust and pride, then you know that leader understands followers. 

And of course, there is great African proverb that reminds us, "If you think you're leading and no one is following you, then you're only taking a walk.” 

The irony is that in an organization that talks about being followers of Jesus, when it comes to leadership it is followship that is missing.