“I
believe there exists throughout America today a rampant sabotaging of leaders
who try to stand tall amid the raging anxiety storms of our time. It is a highly
reactive atmosphere pervading all the institutions of our society – a regressive
mood that contaminates the decision-making processes of governments and
corporations at the highest level and, on the local level, seeps down into the
deliberations of neighborhood church, synagogue, hospital, library, and school
boards.”
One of the reasons that leaders fail to
lead, Friedman says, is because we treat them as vendors.
Trained every day to be consumers, we
treat everything as a product to be bought. For instance, we don’t elect
national leaders. Instead, we work to get our “brand name” in power. In the
same way that people have strong opinions about the consumption of Pepsi or
Coke, we either like Liberal or Conservative, Democrat or Republican, and only
those who are on our side have any brains at all. If the brand we don’t like is
in power we simply demonize everything they do. We believe that because at
Burger King we can have it “our way,” everything else works the same way. The
result is that “leaders” ignore things like doing the right thing, and acting
in the common good in favor of keeping customers happy. Sadly, leaders have
become vendors.
Believing that the customer (that’s us)
is always right, our ability to dialogue on difficult issues, to seek the
common good, or even to be civil to one another, goes right out the window. It’s
either, “my way or the highway.” Eventually, this all or nothing attitude leads
to violence as we all too often see in the news these days.
In the church, we can all too easily
see ourselves as customers to be served instead of disciples of Christ who do
the serving.
When a decision is made that doesn’t
sit well with us it’s all too easy to file a complaint with the customer service
department; to focus on our dissatisfaction and voice it as criticism; or insist
that the leaders are intentionally up to no good. The vendors (a.k.a., leaders)
of the congregation have simply failed to deliver the goods.
On the other hand, leaders can become
so attuned to the criticism and take on the role as vendor to the point that “job
one” becomes trying to keep everyone happy (an impossibility) instead of
tending to the mission of the congregation.
I share this reflection not because our
congregation manifests this behavior consistently. We do not. That is a
blessing from God. I share this because this problem is all around us.
Changing leaders into vendors is a sign
of sin and brokenness.
As people of faith, we can work to
edify instead of tear down, and focus on the needs of others instead of
self-service. Scripture reminds us that leaders are called and gifted to lead;
that all the members of the body of Christ are to be about the business of building
up that body. That takes leadership – godly leadership. Such individuals must
be encouraged to lead, by boldly stepping out in faith to serve effectively for
Christ.
It is very important to make sure we “keep
the main thing, the main thing.”
Let’s pray and work that it might
happen everywhere.
[Dear Reader, today’s article was written by
a minister friend (Pastor John) from the Lutheran Church (ELCA – Evangelical Lutheran
Church of America). I was reading this article written for the church
newsletter while vacationing at my brother’s in Virginia. What impressed me was
his clarity in identifying a major problem in our church leadership today, but
even more so in our entire culture. I
trust you are as challenged as I was in reading this article. I received his
permission to use this article for Roots
in Ripon with a few editorial changes.]
No comments:
Post a Comment