You.
I recall one time as a younger when the sermon was over and I was
dutifully greeting people at the back of the service.
I had one particularly stoic, solid fellow
come up to me and wondering what he could say to me.
And he said, thank you so much for your talk.
Well, thank you very, very much.
And I had visions of that this morning
after hearing that tour de force, that we were all blessed by that.
After this presentation, I would have some
kind people come up to me and say, well, thank you very much for your talk.
But I was relieved when Dr.
Shepard went into those concluding remarks that presented vision and ideas and
inspiration and comments because indeed, that's where all of us are living
and that's where we hope the field of leadership starts to come along.
The phrase, of course, plundering the
Egyptians has been used by many and many and many Christian and non Christian
scholars alike who are trying to find something that they can say and something
they can do that's effective in their own field, especially Christian scholars of
leadership, trying to find what they can find, as Dr.
Shepard said, in the fields of social
sciences and philosophy and elsewhere, so that their ministries are effective.
The material presented today comes from a
paper I developed in 2016, and now the genesis of it is rather humbling as well.
I was preparing for my comprehensive exams and I thought, what is a good way to
prepare for my comprehensive exams that I don't simply have to read
sources and scholars that I'm not very familiar with and try to track down all
the rabbit trails that can be very time consuming and even perhaps wasting?
So I thought, why don't I try to develop
an anthology that engages other Wesleyan scholars who are doing leadership studies
or who have been in positions of leadership and who have reflected on it?
And so I started to gather essays around leadership theory and different avenues
into leadership so that I was precisely letting other people do the work for me as
they were tracking down rabbit trails and as they were reading widely.
And I was reading their summaries as I was reading their chapters.
Now, any anthology needs an introductory chapter.
And so the material presented today is the introductory chapter from the book that
Brian Easley and I collected called Leadership the Wesleyan Way.
And because I was preaching on the regular
at the time, these five marks are all started all start with the letter C
because every good preacher needs some kind of alliteration, of course.
And another thing that preachers often want is they find something in the text
that perhaps is fresh and original and do for their people to hear.
And then they wildly go searching for scholars to have said something like it
before so that they can make sure that their inclinations are grounded in the
scholarship whenever I was putting together this
material, I had not yet read William Abraham's
article called The End of Wesleyan Theology.
But when I found it, it gave voice to what I was trying to do, to what in my bones
had been stirring, which was, how do we take this man who had taught us so much
and whose life had been an inspiration for so many of us?
And not simply engage his thought, but
engage his thought as a means of living out our duty and calling?
Not just be inspired by his evangelistic fervor, but also be one who was able to
train, also be one who was able to see our institutions, our communities, our small
groups, you name it, lived out effectively so that they are missionally engaged.
William Abraham's
article appeared in the 2005 issue of the Wesleyan Theological Journal.
I commend it to you.
If you have a chance to read it, you will
see a number of truths that leap out from it right away.
Number one, whenever Abraham says that we've reached the end of Wesley and
theology, he also concludes that we ought to and
must continue doing historical studies of Wesley unabated.
He says, the first presentation we had this morning is a wonderful example of why
Wesley studies must continue in their historic sense, unabated.
And the concluding marks remarks from Dr.
Shepard, I hope, give rise to why these remarks, I hope, are worthy.
So now that I've described why this topic
of marks for Wesleyan leaders or marks of Wesleyan leadership,
I'll go into a series of summarizing what these five marks are drawn from the
thought and action and context that Wesley was engaging.
Then I will try to name five or six issues as I see them facing many of us in the
Western world, the wider spirit of the age in which we all are doing ministry.
And finally, I'd like to conclude with a couple of encouragements, things that you
can do or projects that you might take on as you are thinking about your own
Wesleyan marked leadership, the effort to make effective various
ministries and endeavors through those who consider Wesley, as William Abraham calls
him, an evangelist, spiritual father, and saint.
Any study of leadership has got to engage
with three different aspects of it, namely goals, processes, and relationships.
Without goals, nothing is done.
There is no leadership that is being achieved because nothing is happening.
Or if it is happening, it's happening only by accident.
Processes are what give purpose or
strategy to those goals being accomplished.
They're not simply being accomplished by accident.
They are being accomplished in ways that can be emulated.
Specific actions are taken, or specific demeanors are being modeled.
And finally, relationships, because goals
or projects can get done and there can be processes.
But if there are not specific kinds of
relationships that are happening between leader and follower or leaders and
followers or followers and leaders, then you do not have a healthy relationship
that we could properly define as leadership.
It's much more akin to, of course,
tyranny, goals, processes and relationships.
Now we can think about Wesley giving modifiers to each one of these.
We want eschatological goals, goals that
are signposts or symbols of the coming kingdom.
We think about addiction recovery, as was
mentioned, the sign of the coming kingdom when we shall all be presented faultless
without blame spotless eschatological goals.
We think of just processes, processes that do not chop people up, processes that do
not leave them battered and bruised without appropriate healing along the way.
And we think of holy relationships, relationships that are truly not marked by
leader and follower, but by leader and followers.
The Wesleyan movement, if it's going to
impact our leadership, must remind us that our movement is a
discipleship movement, a movement that is marked by following after Christ.
With these preliminary remarks, then let
me give you five more common marks of Wesleyan leadership.
Number one, commonality. Commonality.
I was sitting in a Rotary club meeting in Brockville, Ontario.
We had a member of our club who had just
returned from an aspect of northern Canada and he was describing for us all the
leaders that he was surprised to find there.
And then, of course, his humility was on
perfect display as he was able to give us the kicker of the talk.
Why was I surprised to find good leaders in places where I hadn't been?
John Wesley's conviction that leaders can grow up in a number of contexts is on
display in the organizational structures that he championed.
Societies were made of bakers and blacksmiths and barbers.
Leaders emerged from the people.
Leadership development thrived and took
place in the classes leadership scholars might be familiar with.
Ken Blanchard's, of course, off repeated
phrase now by John Maxwell leadership is influenced.
And of course, in those classes you have influence, the influence of Jesus Christ
through the Holy Spirit taking place through peers in one another.
We have bands where there is deep, deep, deep conviction of sin that's
allowed and passion, passion, passion for following that's fostered commonality.
Do we have structures that allow for leaders to emerge from among all of us?
Do we fall prey to perhaps exhibits of leader member exchange where those who do
well for us are the ones that are put into good position of leadership?
Yes.
In the Christian faith, we have seemingly
where God has blessed families and the Christian faith and leadership in the
Christian faith can become family business, so to speak, where generational
leadership is the name of people who have had ancestors in leadership or simply put
into leadership over and over and over again.
Do we have a conviction for commonality
that leaders can emerge from among us, from anywhere among us, by the gifts
calling of God and the development of peers?
Number two, do we have stomach for conflict?
As our brother said, John Wesley was not nice.
An old Methodist preacher gave me a great vignette from Wesley, who was meeting
another man who was on horseback, and they came to a single pass in Elaine, and the
man called across to Wesley, he said, I never step aside for a nave.
And John Wesley stepped aside, and he said, I always do.
Wesley, of course, was very familiar with controversies through Calvinism and
Armenianism antinomianism slavery, which Wesley called the execrable villainy
scandal of religion, England and of human nature.
Wesley was at odds with some of his
followers over the American Revolution issues of his day.
He was no stranger to conflict in them.
Do we have the stomach for conflict?
Number three conversation.
It strikes me as incredibly valuable that
John and Charles and some of their contemporaries in the Holy Club, early
Methodists, would practice what they were going to say in public with one another.
They practiced what words and phrases that
they would use precisely so that they would not say the wrong thing.
Conversation is precisely what allows us to do that kind of practicing as well, so
that our speaking and that our listening demeanors are well trained among brothers
and sisters before they are put on display in public.
Of course, the bands with the use of guided questions so they would know what
questions were going to be asked to them, and the challenge to be ruthlessly honest.
Are our practices of conversation fostering in us an ability to have deep
relationships and deep and profound friendships?
Is our leadership marked as much by
speaking and by listening, or as much by listening as it is by speaking?
Are we able to capture the claims of our
opponents not as straw men, but as strong men?
Are we able to capture in conversational tone, in plain language, the arguments of
those who may be against us, but in their best form, precisely so that they can be
met with even stronger claims rooted in scripture and theology?
Number four cultural creation.
Andy Crouch, her perhaps Erswell leader at Christianity Today, describes
himself self proclaimed as a Wesleyan Anglican.
And one of the reasons that he describes himself as a Wesleyan Anglican is because
of his conviction that we ought to be shapers and formers of culture.
Prouch describes and defines culture as what we make of the world in both senses.
What we make of the world in both senses, namely, what we make of the world.
The physical structures that are around us
that make opportunities and gatherings like this possible, the technological
advancements that we have that make gathering over a distance possible,
perhaps even a little bit of a curse at times.
Tables and chairs and desks and pencils
and pens and laptops and iPads, which everybody is using dutifully and not for
email at this moment, are precisely those things that help to make our culture.
Culture is what we make of the world, but not just in that sense.
Says Crouch.
Culture is what we make of the world, in what sense we make of it.
What does it mean?
What does it mean that we desire to live often mediated relationships?
What does it mean that we have grown so used to having
the most significant relationships in our lives be marked and formed and maintained
and perhaps even initiated by websites and apps and algorithms?
What does it mean?
What does it mean whenever we have such
angst and conflict in the immediate aftermath of things like
COVID-19, when there was such empathy and sympathy for one another?
Crouch says that culture is what we make of the world in both senses, the stuff
that we make of the world and the sense that we make of the world.
And, of course, Wesley was no stranger to either of these.
He was a man after the common good.
If your heart is as mine, give me your hand.
Sermons and hymns and tracks and medical
pamphlets, schools and clinics and lending practices, health care.
All this, of course, inspiring part of what Greg Jones was after with the Faith
and Leadership Project, what Jones called social entrepreneurship.
Wesleyan leadership is one that is engaged
in making cultural goods that are for the common good.
May we reclaim that phrase, the common good?
Not just maybe not reclaim it.
May we be bold to share it with our reformed brothers and sisters that they
are not the only ones after some things that can be shared and held in common, but
we, too, have a public theology that can be after common goods.
May we have a conviction that God's, god and God's creation go hand in hand that
what we make of God's good creation can be an act of love and service to God and an
act of love for God as it's of service to others in our world.
And finally, fifth mark of Wesleyan leadership is charity.
Now, here, of course, I have broken my alliteration and introduced a new sound,
commonality conflict conversation, cultural creation, charity.
But at least it starts with the C, right?
And of course, it is literally at the heart of Wesley's theology
is to be found and formed out of God's love and in God's love.
Not in an ineffective kind of love, but
one that is marked that we can love not out of duty, but freely by the work and
will of God in us, willing us to do the good and giving us freedom and joy in it.
I recall coming across Wesley's frustration whenever we thought that
peevishness and jealousy could coexist with happiness.
For Wesley, the heart is too small.
The heart is too small
for it to be filled with things that are against the heart and nature of God.
And it's the transforming work of God that expands our heart, that expands our love
precisely so that our joy may be expanded as well.
Why would we ever think
that leaders should be marked by being willing to make the tough calls and tough
choices, as though that was a thing that needed a hard heart to do.
It's a heart filled with love that can act in those ways.
And if the heart is not marked by love,
then may we be critical not only of others, but of ourselves.
Whenever those leadership actions are ones
that we are taking, we do not steal up our hearts to make tough calls.
We rely on the power of the Holy Spirit, who is continuing to transform us so that
the so called tough calls are always and only marked by God's love.
Joe Dongel has recently discovered to say
that this love is the heart of John Wesley's theology.
And if you've heard Joe Dongel speak over
the last ten years or so, then you know that it is just coming out of him over and
over and over again as he is speaking on west.
May we be similarly filled with that kind of joy so that it captures us as we go
out, as we move into the context where our own leadership is invited and required?
Five marks for Wesleyan leadership drawn
from the spiritual father, from the saints, from the evangelist, as
Abraham described him, in ways that we might apply him.
So what's the contemporary landscape in which these things are happening?
What's the contemporary landscape in which
these marks will take place or may be effective for us?
Well, number one, we can use COVID as a broad umbrella.
I won't ask for a show of hands, but have any of you been late on something?
A deadline, missed a meeting, forgotten an anniversary or something along the lines
and simply said, well, you know COVID, that incredibly complex set of
practices, years, times revealed for us conflicts around privacy and security,
rights and freedoms, materialism and spiritual life.
Here I commend to you psychologist Ian
McGilchrist, whose two very thick books I cannot get through, but a number of
podcasts where he commends himself and handles himself quite well.
Ian Mcgillcrest, his two books, the Matter
with Things and The Master and His Emissary.
The landscape that we are in, says McGilchrist, is a shifting of times.
He says that for a previous generation, we
had been in a right brained era, but now we are in a left brained era, an era
obsessed with detail, perfection and precision, but very shy on meaning
and very short on an ability to see the whole COVID two trump.
If COVID captures a certain umbrella, so
does that term as well the rise of right wing and left wing nationalisms.
Nationalisms is exactly where we all are
as people scramble for communities to belong to, as we see a shift.
I see so many people talk about the west being an individualistic culture.
And what I see among so many people that I minister to, who are younger than me, is
they are much more collective than those who think the west is so individualistic.
No. They want to know what their community
thinks before they commit to what they think.
They want to know what others that they identify with think before they will risk
sharing their own thoughts in public one way or another.
We live in the rise of right wing and left wing nationalisms.
Number three, we live in an age where
there are more and more sages and fewer and fewer gatekeepers.
Any number of names might stand in here.
It's not particularly recent.
Oprah Winfrey has been around for quite some time.
Sages that are offering their wisdom for how to live life.
We have simple rules.
We have actors who are giving their own three rules for their own wisdom.
Right?
People are clamoring, engaging are after wisdom.
Who would have thought that lectures on
the Book of Genesis would fill a Toronto theater time upon time upon time?
And that Jordan Peterson would have millions and millions of YouTube views?
New sages. New sages.
And yet fewer and fewer gatekeepers.
Of course, fewer and fewer gatekeepers is brought about by the rise of technologies
that allow every person not simply to be an actor, but to be a producer.
If you've got a cell phone, not only can
you get stock footage and live footage of whatever story you want to tell, but you
can make it tell just about whatever you want to.
Now we live in an age of YouTube,
George Floyd, and the many stories that support or contradict whatever story
you want to tell around that horrific event.
Finally, remote new rules for work.
Men and women that I have the privilege to teach with have this frustration.
My youth pastor does not want to work.
They want full time salary and part time work.
What I want to say is maybe the rules have changed.
We know that Millennials and Gen Z
don't simply have a desire for relationship, but that they require it.
And if they won't get it at work, they will spend less time there.
I can tell you story after story of pastors frustrated.
And I can also point to you example after
example of pastors and ministers who are willing to have a part time salary
and yet do full time hours if the relationships are rich.
The nature of remote is changing the rules for work for Gen Z and millennials.
Just yesterday, I received
a very kind trip from an Uber driver who is simultaneously doing it work and in the
evenings telling me he is studying for his real estate license.
Part of me was like, well, I guess I'm not in Marion, Indiana, anymore.
And yet those people live in Marion too.
Changing rules of work require us to be leaders who are flexing with the time and
day and seeing how do we yet live and lead in this time wisely?
Which is precisely why marks come into play.
M-A-R-K-S commonality and conflict,
conversation, cultural creation, charity.
Here are the practices for you to put into place.
Number one, ask yourself which of these markers of the age resonates with you?
Which of them is where you are living and working?
Which of them is residing in your own mind?
Which of them are forming the questions that your people are asking you?
Which of them are forming the questions
that you are asking your people, or that you are even asking your leaders?
What's the most specific element?
I encourage you to break these down and address one and not multiple, because as I
certainly know, and I expect some of you do, whenever we try to tackle the spirit
of the age, which is made up of all of these things, we can be overwhelmed.
We will not win that fight.
We will retreat into sectarianism.
We will retreat into quietism.
We will certainly not be the evangelists
that our spiritual Father would have us to be.
Be specific.
Write it down.
Which element of the spirit of the age?
Develop your own name.
Your own is right there for you, but then quickly on its heels, select one
of the marks and perhaps add one of your others.
William Abraham's insight was not that there is now just one John Wesley.
So there's not just one John Wesley of history.
So there's multiple John Wesley's of faith.
So Abraham names Wesley scholar after Wesley scholar after Wesley scholar.
Who is being remade in their own image.
The John Wesley of Al Coppage, Lawrence Wood, Henry Knight and so on.
Well, guess what?
Says Abraham.
This is actually good news, because Wesley can be an inspiration for us.
As you read him, as you let him guide you in prayer, as you
are engaged with his thought, what of the man inspires you?
What of the man encourages you?
What does God use in Him to build you up?
Does it mean that we engage them uncritically, as Dr.
Shepherd said?
But the learning can become more than
simply head knowledge to become heart knowledge.
How can your leadership be inspired by Wesley?
I've given you those five marks. Add your own.
And it doesn't even need to begin with.
Break the rules and add a new letter.
If it is a mark for you.
And as God's spirit confirms and gives
conviction that that is a mark of leadership that he would like to be in
your life, then double down on it and lead with it.
Let it be something that flows from you over and over and over again.
Are you one with the stomach for conflict?
And that's how people are going to know.
That's how you serve the Lord.
Are you going to lead with conversation,
your ability to listen, your ability to converse and capture other people's ideas
in a way that they feel understood even while they are challenged with the truth?
Are you one who is going to lead with
cultural creation, even with digital content.
Are you going to be one who is known by
your love as one resonates with you?
Then you might even add one to it.
Let one flow out of your spirit and then let one flow out of your strategy.
What kind of leadership is needed for your community?
Your family, your church, your workplace, the informal network that God has given to
you at work, with friends in your neighborhood?
Let one mark of leadership flow from your spirit.
Let one mark of leadership flow from your strategy.
How will others see a Christlike leader in you?
Because you have spent time in the company of the Wesley's.
Thank you very much.