LeadershipConneXtions

Reweaving the Fabric of a Torn World

I was really moved by a metaphor Tim Keller used in his book, Generous Justice. As I have been working on the Exercises, at different sections I talk about shalom (peace), mishpat (justice) and hesed (lovingkindness) as core themes for how we are called to live in the world as God's servants.

Tim Keller uses the metaphor of weaving a fabric to describe how God created life on earth. The original fabric was well woven and included peace and justice. Sin has torn the fabric of our world and God invites us to reweave this torn fabric. Keller says,

"In general, to do justice means to live in a way that generates a strong community where human beings can flourish. Specifically, however, to do justice means to go to places where the fabric of shalom has broken down, where the weaker members of societies are falling through the fabric, and to repair it...

How do we do that? The only way to reweave and strengthen the fabric is 
reweaving yourself into it...

Reweaving shalom means to sacrificially thread, lace and press your time, goods, power, and resources into the lives and needs of others."  (pp 177).

It hit me that the Incarnation which we are about to celebrate for the next week was God weaving Himself in to the torn fabric of the world. 

An angel of the Lord said to the shepherds, "Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you, he is Christ the Lord. . . Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.'" (Luke 2:11-14)

The only real questions are: Are we doing this? Where are we doing this? How well are we doing this? Will we continue doing this?

Brian K. Rice
Leadership ConneXtions International
www.lci.typepad.com

The Apostle Paul and Jean Pierre de Caussade (God's Penmanship)

Let me launch this post with a Scripture text and a quote. the Scripture is from the Apostle Paul and the quote is from Jean Pierre de Caussade.

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.  (2 Corinthians 3:1-3)

The Holy Spirit writes no more gospels except in our hearts. All we do from moment to moment is live the new gospel of the Holy Spirit. We, if we are holy, are the paper; our sufferings and our actions are the ink. The workings of the Holy Spirit are his pen and with it He writes a living gospel.  (Jean Pierre de Caussade, for some background on de Caussade, read this)  The book, Abandonment, is his great spiritual classic.

First, there is so much rich spiritual insight in these two texts, that they really deserve your careful reading and reflection. I've reflected quite a bit on this and won't include that reflection here.

I will say this. Here we see the Leader as Poet/Prose Artist. Paul, through his ministry, is being used by the Holy Spirit to write living gospels on the hearts of the people he loves.

Those of us who provide leadership in the name of Christ, are used by Christ to imprint the Story of Grace in the lives of those we lead. We help them write their story of Creation and of the Fall. We help them write the chapters of Redemption and all throughout the writing, their are the hints of the Coming Restoration.

Ephesians 2:10 describes us as God's workmanship.  The Greek word is poiema, from which we get our English words - poem, poet, poetry. We are literally, God's living poetry! We are not just story, we are God's artistic prose/poetry. There is something deeply spiritual and sacramental about this work of God and the work we are invited to be a part of.

So, today, begin to see those around you, those you love, those you lead, those you serve, as the living paper upon which the Story of God is waiting to be written. And you are invited to be a part of the writing of that Story. This is beyond amazing. It is deep mystery.

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

p.s.  After I did this, I remembered an old book I read long ago by David Fisher. It is The 21st Century Pastor: A Vision Based on the Ministry of Paul. There is a chapter in the book on this theme. I skimmed through it and will give it a good re-reading in the near future. Plus, there is an awesome chapter on what it means to work with people who are described as Jars of  Clay.  If you can, get the book, it is rich in metaphors and images that define the work of ministry and leadership.

The Wounded Healer

Metaphors are interesting and they are powerful.

Metaphors are deeply held conceptual models that give shape to how we understand life.

When it comes to leadership metaphors, the same is true. Our leadership metaphors fundamentally guide how we think about leadership and how we live as leaders. In the waning decades of modernity, the dominant leadership metaphors were fragmenting. They were part of a paradigm that was disintegrating and losing its power to capture the hearts of people.  The leader as CEO, the leader as Commander of the Troops, the leader as Hero, the leader as Expert - all were losing their power.

We are on the search for New Metaphors of Leadership.

When I teach the course on Emerging Paradigms of Leadership, I'll often explore some of these new metaphors.

The Leader as Missional Entrepreneur...

The Leader as Spiritual Environmentalist...

The Leader as Cultural Cartographer...

... each one is becoming a favorite of mine.

Here is another one that I am re-visiting. I first heard it from Henri Nouwen in the book by the same name.

The leader as: Wounded Healer.

When I think of this metaphor, I think of:

Jacob now walking/leading with a limp,

Paul with a thorn in the flesh,

The ability to sympathize and empathize,

Power being perfected in weakness,

Authenticity, vulnerability, transparency,

Being very real,

Bearing the pain of others,

Knowing the hurts of the world,

Messy and mysterious,

Grace and strength

No easy answers, but wise ones,

Story, journey, movement,

Healing and longing,

Henri Nouwen, Desmond Tutu, John Perkins...

Above all, I think of Jesus.

For an emerging generation that is more skeptical than ever of leadership as it has been practiced via the metaphors of modernity, this one resonates.

This is a worthy journey - to become this kind of leader.

I value your prayers for my own journey to become such a leader.

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

The Mentor as Bridge Builder

Here is a thought from Buscaglia via Behar that really moved me.

Master bridge builders are ideal teachers and mentors who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students and mentorees to cross.

Our words, our actions, our love, our very "self" become the bridge for another to walk across from the place where they are to the place where they would like to be.

Jesus talks about laying down his life. No one forces him to do this, Jesus does it on his own accord. While Jesus was talking about laying his life down as a sacrifice on the cross, I think the principle is this:

Mentors are always laying down their lives for the sake of others. In some cases, we lay down our life as a bridge for someone to use to move into the future.

May you have great joy and fruit as a Master Bridge Builder. And may you encourage those who cross your bridge to become bridge builders as well.

Brian Rice

Broken Leaders and Wounded Healers

We are broken people.

I think this is one of the things that Living Word Community Church understands deeply. Brokenness is a fact of life. We exist to reach broken people and connect them with the God who heals and restores. It is a high calling and a holy responsibility.

Not only are people broken but leaders (since most of them are people) are broken also. Every one of us is touched by the pain of the world. We may be touched only a little (but that is doubtful) or we may be touched deeply and lastingly.

With brokenness comes pain, and with pain comes the attempts to find relief.

Whether it is divorce, abuse, addiction, financial problems, sickness, family problems, loneliness, co-dependency, or a thousand other things, we are broken and in pain and seeking for relief.

I love the language of Henri Nouwen on this. Nouwen (pictured below) describes the Christian leader as The Wounded Healer. We are in the process of recovery, but still in process. We are hungry beggars telling other hungry beggars where to find bread.

In a culture that values quick fixes, the appearance of success, the "I'm okay, you're okay, life is okay," put on the Praise the Lord smile authenticity is a rare but much needed quality.

In particular, the emerging generation values authenticity and all authenticity will admit and lead out of one's brokenness.

Such authenticity will admit brokenness but be full of hope because God's redeeming work is sure. Evil is strong but grace is stronger still.

Brian Rice

The Leader as Mystic (Ruthless Trust)

Here is a short paragraph from Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning.

It is one of my favorite quotes. I have read it (and thought about it) dozens of times.

Ruthless Trust is an unerring sense, way deep down, that beneath the surface agitation, boredom, and insecurity of life, it's gonna be all right. Ill winds may blow, more character defects may surface, sickness may visit, and friends will surely die, but a stubborn, irrefutable certainty persists that God is with us and loves us in our struggle to be faithful.

A non-rational, absolutely true intuition perdures that there is something unfathomably big in the universe (kabod/glory), something that points to Someone who is filled with peace and power, love and undreamed of creativity -- Someone who will reconcile all things in himself.   (pp. 180)

When leaders have Ruthless Trust like this, they become vehicles and avenues through whom the All-Creative God works to reconcile all things to Himself in and through Jesus.

The work of spiritual formation, often through seasons of suffering, the dark night of the soul and the wilderness experience is the way of building Ruthless Trust into our lives and leadership.

It is the mystical encounter with God that does not exclude rationality, but often goes beyone it. Manning quotes Rahner who prophetically said, "In the end you will be a mystic or you will be nothing." (I am paraphrasing that from memory, so it is close but not exact.)

Brian Rice

More Metaphors of Leadership

I think a lot about leadership in terms of metaphors.

My prevailing metaphors are leader as: Servant, shepherd, steward, sufferer, saint, sage and subversive.

I recently did some work on the leader as: Dedicated soldier, rule-abiding athlete, and hard-working farmer (2 Timothy 2:1-7)

I am now doing some thinking about the leader as: Clown, mystic and poet! Not normal metaphors, but perhaps very good ones.

Nouwen talks about the leader as clown (Clowning in Rome) who disarmingly engages the powers that be through humor and surprise.

Karl Rahner (and Brennan Manning) talks about the leader as mystic who has deep and transformative encounters with God and speaks and leads out of that encounter.

And the leader as poet? The one who finds creative wordsmithing to stir the mind and heart. I'm not sure who is developing this, although T.S. Eliot was certainly one who did this very well.

If anyone has any interesting thoughts on these metaphors, please email me at:

lcibrice@gmail.com

Brian Rice

The Leader as Hero

HEROES!

Probably the image below comes to mind.

But this popular TV show (as interesting as it is) is not the heroes that I am referring to.

Paul Johnson has written many books which I have enjoyed. Heroes is one of his recent ones. In this book, Johnson looks at 30 heroes divided into about 13 different categories. There are a number of individuals who are quite unexpected and there are many who are expected but delightfully discussed.

Some of my favorites in this book are:  Henry V, Sir Thomas Moore, Queen Elizabeth, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Churchill. One that was very unexpected but very enjoyable was the intellectual hero - Wittgenstein! I also enjoyed reading his thoughts on Ronald Reagan who had enormous deficiencies, but was able to stay focused on that small number of things he did very well. I also liked his words on John Paul

This is not the place to cover this "rabbit trail point" but I find myself wondering if the leader as HERO is a valid biblical metaphor for us to use? With that said, I'll go on and tell you the four criteria that Johnson says are the ways to recognize heroes.

1. They think everything through with absolute independence and view the current consensus with suspicion.
2. Once their mind is made up, they act with decisiveness, resoluteness and consistency.
3. They ignore and reject everything the media says about them.
4. Finally, they act with great personal courage at all times, regardless of the consequences to themselves.

Interesting list of qualities . . .

What do you thing?

And how heroic are you?

Brian Rice