Reluctant Leaders and Wounded Healers - Part I

God, Almighty God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, runs an odd recruitment agency:

‘So, Moses, tell me, can you speak Egyptian?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘But?’
‘No confidence…I stammer…’
‘Experience of leadership?’
‘None. I just lead sheep around the desert. I rarely speak to anyone. Like to keep myself to myself, you know…’
‘Leading sheep around the desert? I’m returning you to Egypt to lead My people through the desert to the Promised Land?’
‘Pardon?’ Moses pauses and God remains silent. ‘I can’t go back. I murdered someone…’

I heard the phrase ‘Reluctant Leader’ the other day whilst listening to a Rob Bell podcast and walking around the Downs. It made me think. ‘Wounded Healer’ is a phrase I came across some years ago in N T Wright’s excellent book The Challenge of Jesus. So, I suppose this post is an exploration to see what sort of leaders could emerge in the future in the world of politics, sports, science, education, economics, and, in particular, the church.

At the time of writing this post, I have been watching The Elon Musk Show on BBC iPlayer. What a remarkable, pioneering leader, a visionary in whom the future was conceived years before he became well known. And yet the Reluctant Leaders and the Wounded Healers considered here, are of a completely different order. They are poor in spirit, running low on vision, blind even, and failures, but it is their lack and their suffering that, strangely, turns out to be their route to leadership.

I hope I can convey some of this…

Reluctant Leaders

Rob Bell was arguing that the best leaders are often ‘Reluctant Leaders’: Moses, Gideon, Samuel, and Jonah all argued their case before God and did their level best to avoid leadership. Moses complained that he couldn’t command the attention of a crowd, Gideon was full of fear, Jonah…

You may or may not interpret the thoughts you may have been having about leadership as ‘God tapping on your shoulder’, but you can’t seem to silence the voice inside, and you know a decision is pending. I’m referring to ANY role that requires leadership…it could be a sports team, a building site, responsibility in a science laboratory, a composer, a librarian…a mother, a father.

It’s unlikely to be a role of biblical proportions, but, whatever it is, it feels daunting to you!!

On the other hand, it could be that God is calling you as an apostle at this time for God’s people.

Moses had no vision for the deliverance of the Jews. St Paul, as Saul of Tarsus, had no idea that he had been called as an apostle before the foundation of the world in Christ until God distracted him on the road to Damascus. God, it seems, has His way of getting our attention.

The New Testament is so counter-cultural, marinaded as we are in our meritocracy

But whatever it is, bidding farewell to the relative safety of where we are, and taking a leap of faith, will be required. Moses had carved out a reasonable existence since murdering the Egyptian. He had escaped into the desert, maintaining a safe distance between himself and Pharoah. And he knew his way around the desert.

But God had pinned him down. First by distracting him with the curious sight of a non-burning burning bush and then out-arguing him.

Wounded healers

And I quote from NT Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus:

‘’…read Paul again; read John again; and discover that we are cracked vessels full of glory, wounded healers…we are discovering the true meaning of what the Eastern Orthodox Church refers to as ‘divinization’…true divinity is revealed not in self-aggrandizement…but in self-giving love…’

And this is the trick. Floored as we are at times by our failures, weakness, brokenness, inabilities, restrictions, fears and limitations, and scars from life, we are completely floored…by grace.

I remember my astonishment, at 16 or 17, discovering that the word ‘gospel’ simply means ‘good news’ and not the first four books in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And I argued strongly: ‘the gospel can’t be true – it’s too good to be true’. The concept of a free gift of eternal life, a free gift of righteousness, and the gift of the Spirit was brand new to me. It shocked me and refined ‘religion’ or what I had understood Christianity to be.

But Jesus said, ‘Freely you have received, freely give’.

The New Testament is so counter-cultural, marinaded as we are in our meritocracy.

That’s grace. A gift to be received, not a reward for good work, or being good.

Whatever has been done or suffered in the past; however damaged and cracked the wounded healers may be, and however undeserving they are, they know they have been filled with glory, things from above, which enable them to bring to bear the kingdom of God in any sphere of life, whether secular or spiritual; there are no boundaries.

Either way, irreversible change is inevitable.

The Future?

Such leaders of the future are already here: reluctant, cracked vessels, full of glory.

Meanwhile, some may be engaged in an argument with God, like Moses, or at least with themselves. If that’s you, I pray you’ll lose and quickly!

In Part II of Reluctant Leaders and Wounded Healers we’ll look at the inclusive nature of the death of Christ on the cross and what N T Wright referred to as the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of ‘Divinisation’ and how present-day ‘identifiers’, a hot potato and a chief debating point at the moment, are redefined in the gospel, and redefined in future leaders.