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Rector’s Reflections
Thursday 8th May 2025
Christian Leadership in Today’s World
In the course of the current series of reflections, we have been looking at some of the qualities which we might look for from men and women exercising Christian leadership in today’s world. I should add that the exercise of Christian leadership is not just about leadership within the Church, whether lay or ordained. It is also about the leadership which Christians exercise in their workplaces, in family life, and in their communities.
I have suggested that Christian leaders need to be men and women of compassion, who are seeking to promote what is best for everyone (“the common good”). They need to be willing to embrace the complexity and messiness of our world, and have the humility and courage to accept their own mistakes and failings. They need to be willing to embrace the truth, even if the truth is awkward, inconvenient, or profoundly challenging.
At this point, you might be thinking to yourself: well, all these qualities are all very well, but what about mission and evangelism? Shouldn’t we expect Christian leadership to be evangelistic and missional in its focus and intention? Shouldn’t we be expecting our leaders to be telling people about Jesus?
My answer to this would be to start by saying that I am fully in agreement with the fundamental premise; yes, our leadership should indeed be missional and evangelistic. Our world needs to know the good news of the transforming love of God shown in the life and teaching of Jesus, and made freely available to all through the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. So I quite agree that Christian leadership in today’s world needs to be focussed on sharing and communicating the gospel.
But I think that this statement leads on to two further questions. The first question is simply this: how is the exercise of Christian leadership in a particular situation contributing to the spread of the gospel? There will be no set answer to this question, because all will depend on the circumstances. But the question needs to be asked. Christian leadership is leadership which contributes to the spread of the gospel, to a greater or lesser degree. Does our leadership display at least some of the values of the gospel, such as love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, or justice? Is our leadership an attempt to further the Kingdom of God?
The second question is perhaps more challenging: if the gospel is all about what God has done and is doing through His Son Jesus Christ, where and how do we see God doing this gospel work? Are we focussing too narrowly on what God is doing in the Church? God is indeed at work in and through the Church, and in and through those who identify as Christians. But God is also at work outside the bounds of the Church, and in the lives of men and women who do not identify as Christians. I think our Christian leaders need to be attentive to the work of God outside the traditional bounds of the Church. Perhaps this is increasingly so in a culture where there seem to be fewer and fewer people choosing to attend church on a regular basis. The fact that many church congregations are going down in size does not mean that God is no longer at work in people’s lives. God is still active, and bringing transformation through the power of his Holy Spirit. The Risen Lord Jesus is still a reality in our world, and Christian leadership needs to recognise , enable and celebrate Christ’s ongoing work wherever it is found. I would add that I think Christian leadership increasingly needs to be open to the possibility that there may be times and places when the traditional Church needs to die, so a new Church may be born.
So while I would agree that contemporary Christian leadership needs to be missional and evangelistic in its focus, I would encourage us not to interpret this in too narrow a manner. Christ can be present and at work in quite surprising ways, and in places we had never expected. And there are a myriad of different ways in which we can communicate and share the gospel. There may be times when a gospel centred leadership is nothing at all about what we say, or about trying to get people to come to Church. Instead, it can be all about how we treat others: treating people with compassion and respect, in a world which is often hard and transactional. In other words, Christian leadership can be about trying to treat others as Jesus did; we will know that there will be times when we fall short of this high standard, but at least we are trying our best to follow Jesus’ example.