Courage to Welcome “Strange” Leadership (even) in Crisis

Making collages has kept me sane during this pandemic. 

Today I feel called to share one of my collages but I’m very hesitant to do so. 

It’s a collage I made to express deep pain—my own and the pain of my sisters and friends. But I’m concerned that I’ll come across as bitter. Or that I’ll alienate my brothers in Christian leadership. But I choose to share in hope that you, my brothers, really mean it when you say you long for a church that welcomes and blesses all. I want to trust that you’ll read with compassion and empathy. And that you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt, understanding anything that sounds like accusation comes instead from longing. And I choose to share in hope that you, my sisters, might feel less alone in your pain. Finally, I choose to share because I believe in something better for us all, for the sake of our mission.

The collage I share shows a barber working on both a man and a woman. The man is perfectly coiffured, his beard trimmed and his eyes calm and confident. On the other hand the woman, although attended by the same skilled barber, has a comical man’s haircut and collar and her chin is lacerated from the barber’s efforts to trim her “beard.” The result is painfully ridiculous and her eyes are lowered in shame. The barber, seeing his skillful work bring about less than stellar results, might say, “Well, every other person who I’ve ever groomed has looked great. There must be something wrong with her.”

“Groomed for Leadership”

After many conversations with women who have been groomed for leadership, I’m coming to see this metaphor rings true for many of us. We’ve been shaped by the typical leader model. We’ve read the books, practiced our skills, learned to do things in the “normal” way and it’s got us some accolades. But when we take the risk to listen to people who say, “We called you to lead. Lead as your true self” and step out with courage to do that (even if we’ve never seen leaders lead that way before), we get mixed messages—“Oh, not like that.”

I’m surrounded by many good folks who genuinely want to invite new voices—women and minorities and folks on the margins—to shape the church together. But then some of these same folks are surprised and anxious when the new voices have “strange” ways. I watch a failure of nerve in these moments—grasping for something familiar, questioning once more the calling and instincts of the women and minorities. It says to these women and minorities, “We want you but only if you behave and think and talk and lead like us.” Are we ready for actual change? For different ways of learning and of listening to God? For unfamiliar processes of decision-making?

Our current way of doing church is a very small sampling of how church is done. We have small imaginations for what a sermon might be or how a church might be organized or how discipleship or evangelism could look. We’ve been complaining for years that something’s broken in the church. And if we aren’t careful, in this moment of great upheaval, we’ll reach for something familiar instead of the fresh, new expressions that are rising up in the church for such a time as this.

Perhaps we’re learning how very radical it was for Jesus to invite his followers to expand their imaginations, warning them not to assume that his way would fit into “old wineskins.” Perhaps this is a moment to recognize that what feels strange to us is powerfully active outside of our Western, Evangelical bubble, if we’ll just look around the world and throughout Christian history.

I’m reminded of how the early church flourished in homes, led by women whose role as leaders in the domestic sphere was familiar. It was unsurprising that the same woman who baked the bread might then serve it for communion. But by the fourth century, as the Christian movement became increasingly public and institutional, “social mores required that women remain in the home and out of the public sphere.” How have the innate abilities of women to create community and graciously navigate upheaval brought us through a global shutdown, when we were forced to return to our homes and neighborhoods? How have women continued to pray and worship in their homes, to serve their neighbors, even if the doors of the church building have been closed?

And I’m reminded of the contemporary Christian movement in Iran. The documentary, Sheep Among Wolves says, “The Iranian awakening is a rapidly-reproducing discipleship movement that owns no property, no buildings, has no budget, no 501c3 status or any identifier that the church in the west says you must have, and is predominantly led by women.” As we feel disruption to every identifier that we think the church must have, are there women around the world functioning (even flourishing?) without them? What if women in our culture also have these same skills of courageously sharing their testimonies and trusting in the Lord, whether or not they have been ordained?

The church has (at least) two crises at the moment:

• a disruption of our familiar systems and institutions (a dynamic we’ve been noticing for some time and which has escalated in the pandemic)

• a (lesser known) growing sense of pain among women and minorities at being sidelined and misunderstood. For some it becomes a faith crisis and a reason to leave the church.

What if these two crises are interwoven?

What if this disruption of our familiar systems and institutions that we perceive as a crisis is a beautiful opportunity to turn to those who are not surprised by things they can’t control?

If you’re lamenting the loss of whatever church used to be and waiting eagerly for the day we can return to it, look around you for those who are excited about the opportunities in this moment. Resist the urge to return to what is familiar and comfortable. Invite voices which might have capacity for mess and mystery. They might look on this moment as an adventure, a moment of truth and possibility for the Church. They have been provided for the church for a moment like this. Will we let them lead? And will we be unsurprised if their leadership looks strange?

It might just take us to the new places we’ve been longing for.