01/21/2015

Trinity's Midweek Blast for January 21, 2015

Leadership Begins With the Self

Have you ever had such an experience that when it ended you knew you had been on holy ground? In other words, you were confronted with something so startling that it had to be of God and you left the experience with a change in perspective? I can honestly say that I spent last week on holy ground.

Since 1997, I have been in and out of Haiti more times than I can count. Every immersion is good for my soul and makes me a better person, but this last week was especially rich. What made it rich were the 10 Trinity students who joined the immersion and who have returned to campus changed.

When we were preparing ourselves for the journey in Littleton, Colo., engaged in sessions on leadership and benefitting from the amazing hospitality and missional spirit of Abiding Hope Church, I had some objectives. I hoped that the students would grasp the difference between technical leadership and adaptive leadership, the adaptive being in great need in our church and world right now. I hoped that they would discern the differences between true grassroots partnerships that foster hope and sustainability with dignity for the poor, from those efforts that are well meaning, but are finally what Atlanta-based author Robert Lupton calls "toxic charity." Most of all, I hoped that the experience would have a profound impact on them from the inside-out, that it would work to shape the kind of leaders they are becoming.

Leadership begins with the self. One cannot lead anyone without first leading one's self. I write this as I am preparing to spend three days this week at the Sawmill Creek Resort in Huron, Ohio, where I am a presenter, along with New Testament scholar Troy Troftgruben of Wartburg Seminary, at the Northwest Ohio Synod Theological Conference. Any conversation about leadership should begin with the importance of leading the self. No organization or congregation can outgrow its leader; thus, paying attention to leading one's self first is critical if adaptive leaders are going to bring about needful change in our congregations, churches, and the world.

We will open the conference with the awareness that the North American church is facing issues it has never faced before. More importantly, our world is facing critical issues that we have never faced before. To lead through these issues and to influence positive and sustainable change will require a leader whose own life embodies the changes our church and world desperately need.

That inside-out transformation that I hoped would take root in our Haiti participants is this: The acute and enduring awareness that to be born in our culture is to be born into the global game of life on third base with a 50-foot lead towards home. And, as Luke's Jesus says, "To whom much is given, much is expected." The vast majority of the world does not live like we do. To live like we live is not sustainable without profound catastrophic impact on much of the world, those whom the scriptures call "our neighbors." It does not take long after one is in Haiti to see that metaphorically Haiti is Lazarus lying by the gate of the rich man (cf. Luke 16:19ff).

The two greatest crises our world faces are these, and they are interconnected: 1) The ecological future of the planet in the face of dramatic climatic change; and 2) the widening gap between the rich and the poor. The first place to start in leading into an alternative future is to lead with our lives. When we can heal ourselves from lifestyles that kill, over consumption and consumerism, and instead become consumed by the hope that all might have life, that being rich in God is infinitely greater than being rich in things or power, we not only begin to heal ourselves, we begin to heal the world.

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

Rick Barger, '89
President
Trinity Lutheran Seminary