I've been learning from Rowan Williams this fall (not just, but in a particularly intense way now in relation to leadership). Mark Gornik, a friend, pastor and theologian in New York, sent me a link to a very well-done article from the Financial Times on Williams. At a couple of points Rowan Williams makes very insightful comments about the difficulties of pastoral leadership today in the post-Christian west. In the first, he clearly grates against the modes of leadership foisted upon him and very intentionally pitches his leadership in a way that is a round peg in the square hole our culture has to receive it. Some church leaders take the cultural modes as a gift and ride the blurring of leader and celebrity to the fullest extent they can. Others don't get it at all and bumble along, not unlike the sitcom vicars Williams mentions. Williams is a third category, intentionally and with great wisdom playing the perception of weakness but all the while articulating the sense of his position, its theological rootedness in God's own self-giving, and the 'showing' then that is present in his life and leadership becomes profoundly important for those of us blinding trying to find our way in faith communities and in public as Christian leaders.
One of Williams’ most abiding characteristics has been a refusal to use
his pulpit to condemn the personal morality of an increasingly secular
public. He has said he is keen to avoid the “comic-vicar-to-the-nation”
role. Nor is he interested in the stratagems of political leadership –
forcing a “Clause Four moment” by taking on the traditional wing of his
own Church. He is aware, however, that this could lead to his being
seen as weak: “People think vicars are silly, ineffectual figures who
bumble around the edges of situation comedies.
We have a dangerous blurring of the leader and the celebrity in our
global culture – people don’t always think leadership is being
exercised unless noise is being made. And I think they’re wrong. I just
live with the perception [of weakness] because it is the kind of
culture we live in.”And then closing the article, these two very revealing comments about pastoral ministry and the church today.
“One thing most clergy have experienced is singing solos in
crematoriums because nobody wants to sing hymns – we’ve all been there.
Somebody will say, ‘Can we have “Morning has Broken?”’ but nobody wants
to sing it so the priest gets up and does a rather embarrassed solo.
Should we mind? A lot of me simply says, ‘What if it’s a bit
humiliating to be used? So what?’ It’s a gift to be given.
“It’s
very helpful from time to time to remember that the established church
is slightly absurd. When I was quite a young priest I was taking part
in a wedding in a cathedral – very solemn, and I dressed up very
splendidly. We were processing and I turned a corner and there were a
group of tourists gawping. And I thought, ‘Goodness me, we must look
peculiar.’ It doesn’t mean you don’t do it. But it does, perhaps, mean
that you are protected from being too pleased with yourself. You must
remember, ‘Well, this is a bit odd.’”
From the perspective of the watching world, most of what we do as Christians looks slightly absurd. That's the point of the 'upside down sovereignty' of our Lord, as my pastor put it in her newsletter article this week. That slightly absurd life, however, is the very gift we have been given, and have to give: undeserved mercy, unconditional love, a place at the table.
Anon, and +peace,
Chris
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