The Deepening Leadership Crisis

David Gergen is a former White House advisor to United StatesPresidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton. He now directs the Harvard UniversityCenter for Public Leadership. He recently wrote a blog article about the deepening leadership crisis we are facing. Here are some of the excerpts from his article…

 “Yesterday’s stunning rejection by the House of Representatives of this financial rescue plan represents one of the clearest signs yet of the deepening leadership problems we are facing as a people. The pleas of the President, Congressional leadership, the business community, and the press were all ignored and defied by a majority of members in the House… (One of) the reasons so many voted against the package was that the public has been against it – and in turn, the public has not been persuaded because it has lost trust in our national leadership. And THAT is a serious problem…”

 “At Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership … we have taken public surveys in each of the past three years measuring confidence in our nation’s leadership.. The results haven’t been pretty. In the fall of 2005, some 65% said we have a leadership crisis in our country. By 2006, the number had risen to 69%. And last fall, no less than 77% declared there was a crisis of leadership. 79% said the United States would decline unless we get better leaders.”

 “Please note that this survey did not reflect just an unhappiness with President George W. Bush. It was widespread across 12 different institutions and leadership groupings. Only the military and the medical profession were given relatively high marks this past fall. The institutions and groups with the lowest levels of confidence were smack in the middle of the recent financial meltdown. Four of the five lowest rated groups were business, Congress, the executive branch, and the press. No wonder the “leaders” of these institutions had so much trouble persuading the general public about the seriousness of our financial mess. What we see today then is a leadership vacuum.”

 According to the survey, when asked “How much confidence do you have in the leadership of the following sectors?” with one = none, two = not much, three = a moderate amount, and four = a great deal, here were the results:

Military                                                    3.15

Medical                                                    3.02

Supreme Court                                      2.90

Educational                                            2.84

Nonprofit and Charitable                 2.83

Religious                                                 2.80

State Government                               2.78

Business                                                  2.75

Local Government                             2.70

Congress                                                 2.53

Executive Branch                               2.43

Press                                                        2.26

In his book Eyewitness to Power, David Gergen identifies seven characteristics that are needed for the leaders of today’s organizations:

An inner mastery,

A central, compelling purpose rooted in moral values,

A capacity to persuade,

Skills in working within the system,

A fast start,

A strong, effective, team, and

A passion that inspires others to keep the flame alive.

 As we talk about the paradigm shift going on in the church in the western world, from an attractional and maintenance model to a more missional model, one of the key ingredients is leadership. What does a survey like this tell us about how our religious leadership is being perceived by the culture around us? What does this tell us about the kind of leadership challenges we should expect and how we should respond? There are leadership skills, habits, and capacities that are essential for pastors and religious leaders, that we may have never developed or been told that we needed before.

 David Gergen says we have a leadership vacuum today. Do you think that is true of the church? Can you identify some church leaders that you admire and respect? 

 The Allelon Missional Leadership Network is one group that has helped me think through what church leadership for our times needs to look like. I believe leadership is about:

Creating an environment,

Character and authenticity and courage,

Allowing the vision to emerge from the bottom up, not giving it from the top down,

Creating meaning in the midst of chaos, and

Shaping a new imagination, not tips and techniques.

 We have a leadership crisis. We have a leadership vacuum. We are in a time of transition. How will God create a new leadership to move us forward during this time of great uncertainty and great opportunity?

 

 

Comments

[Robert Hughes]

Excellent article. It will be difficult for good leadership to be recognized as long as the press has such a low reputation. A reputation well-earned through a lengthy run of extremely biased and often incorrect reports on events in the world around us. Sloppy research and jingoistic reporting do not provide the information necessary for the public to differentiate between good and bad leadership in business, military, or government fields.

Reporting on the financial problems of our economy and proposed attempts to address these problems never looked at the underlying issues in detail, ignored the defeat of past efforts to prevent these problems, and focused on side issues of little relevance to the general public or the public sector. No wonder Congress, the President, and the press are all viewed (by the public) as incompetent and self-centered while the press congratulates all three for managing to skillfully promote and pass a measure designed to bailout a sector of our economy mired in greed exacerbated by fraud. When equal credibility is assigned to fact and fiction, fiction always looks better. No pie is sweeter than pie in the sky.

[C. Arlin Talley]

You always ask the right questions, but I wonder about one assertion you make about church leadership for our time where you write "Allowing the vision to emerge from the bottom up, not giving it from the top down."

Isn't that the source of the problem? We've allowed the vision to emerge from our wants and desires rather than accepting what God has envisioned for us. I suspect you're talking about church structures in your criticism, but I think the problem is really with us as individuals. We want what we want; we find others who mostly agree with us; we find leaders who will lead us to get what we want. That's a "bottom up" process. None of us get it exactly right, some better than others.

BTW, Rick Irish, your successor in our presbytery is one those leaders I have come to admire more and more.

Thanks for your insights and unwavering faithfulness to the cause.

[linda lee]

The one element of David Gergan's list that jumps out is a Central, Compeling purpose rooted in moral values.

I would go one step further: great leaders were influenced by a deep humility that allowed them to be driven by the Holy Spirit and God's purpose for their time. It wasn't a matter of getting their
vision from the bottom up - rather it was getting their vision from GOD. If I were to say why there is lack of leadership in the church and in society today it is a lack of being led, fed, and overpowered by the Holy Spirit like those in the early church. Leaders today are too fixated on the narrow picture, cultural appeasement, business acumen, self perpetuation, power structures, selfish rights (and the press filters everything through this lens too) and not on moral excellence. God desperately wants to get His message out
- wisdom cries aloud in the streets - where
are those leaders who will voice it and lead.

In the church and in society, morals do matter and the message is more important than the way it is presented. God takes those who are totally unlikely to be leaders and can make them effective because of the vision they have from God for their time. Look at William Wilberforce's style and struggle. He was not seen as an effective leader, but now looking back we see that his struggle to proclaim what he thought God was stressing - shows great leadership and he was able to overcome the forces of his contemporaries and his culture to overturn slavery. I think it was with God's help. Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood firm against a powerful leader in Hitler and a wrong message, giving radio lectures and writings that to this day are examples to us all, though he died for the right cause. One of the pictures we have of George Washington was a man on his knees in prayer leading the troops. Abraham Linclon had a sense of being led by God in standing firm when the country was divided. We need more leaders like that - sensitive, yielded to the Holy Spirit leading and therefore bold, courageous, and in the long view effective because they sought out God's vision for their time and stopped at nothing to move it foward. We need leaders who are God driven! Sometimes we leave God out of the equation.

[Christian Dominic Boyd]

After reading your post, I think I am experiencing a kairos moment. I have just spent the majority of my day working on my DMin thesis and examining what the Confessions say about the missional nature of the Church and leadership. I have found the Second Helvetic, Westminster, Barmen, and C67 to be very enlightening and wondering why we have not yet been talking about leadership development based out of our primary theology - the Confessions.

Some of the things we are struggling with and trying to find direction on can be found in the Scriptural witness of the Confessions. What is the mission of God? What role does the Church play as it finds its identity in being sent as the Son was sent? What is the purpose of church leaders in light of this mission? What is the gospel and how are we to share it? What are the obligations of being a communion and what ramifications does that bear on leadership? How are the six "evangelical truths" of Barmen a prophetic testimony to the church today in the U.S.? How well have we actually lived out or call to be reconciling ambassadors of the Kingdom of God? How well have we been focusing on Kingdom concerns, and fostering leadership to help us take a balcony view and find a path with God that does not compromise, as Barmen describes, the faith we have inherited?

Everything everyone has posted so far to me rings true. Furthermore, the leadership capacities Allelon lifts up fit well within what I have been reading.

[Steve McVie]

"It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master."
-- Ayn Rand

[Noel Anderson]

While we see excellent leadership in many churches--especially the large and/or growing ones--that begins and ends at the congregational level. Beyond this leadership seems lost in a political struggle. Beware if they start speaking of our problems as "ecclesiastical issues" rather than clashing worldviews, because that means they are looking to centralize power. The cures are neither political nor administrative; they are ideological. It doesn't matter how many ways we rearrange exactly how we are manacled together; we won't function as a denomination until we sort out the core convictions.

[Dave Barry]

It's definitely frustrating as a seminary student and a potential future leader in the Presbyterian church to recognize the failure of previous generations to garner confidence in their leadership ability, which some have pointed to as a reason in the decline of our denomination (see Beau Weston's "Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment" on pcusa.org).

While it is good for us to identify the good leaders among us, and even better to encourage them to step up to the plate in a time of crisis, it is equally important to seek out new ways of training leaders so that supply can meet demand. Sad to say, I've met a lot of church leaders that I would never hand an organization over to - they're dearly sweet people, and greatly needed in our midst, but its not good for an organization to be led by people who are singularly minded on the care and comfort of their flock. Jesus set out to save the lost...

I've raised this question on this blog before - how are young leaders in our denomination being conditioned. I look at my own ordination process and recognize that more than anything I'm being conditioned to jump through hoops I've come to despise. How is this helping me be one sent into the world to bring good news?

While a lack of leadership is an immediate concern, the longterm concern is the lack of adequate training for church leaders. I'm concerned by the burn-out rate of new pastors, possibly a result of poor conditioning, or even wrong conditioning. It is as though seminary is training me to be a sprinter, and the church needs triathlon athletes. I can "read" a 300 page book in an hour, write exegetical papers pretty well, do group presentations with adequate ease, and I enjoy spend hours doing theological reflection on a spiritual retreat.

How does that translate to the normative church experience?

How am I being conditioned to step out from behind the walls of the church and into God's mission in the world?

[Ronn Garton]

Frankie Schaefer has recently written an endorcement of the Obama campaign with Leadership as the underlying motive for his support. It is worth reading.

[Steve McVie]

Can I take this opportunity, in response to Ronn's comment, to say how much it gives some of us non-evangelicals a serious case of the willies when you guys capitalize "Leadership" like that? "Leadership" isn't good; it is morally neutral. You can lead people to do good or to do evil. IT IS NOT AN END IN ITSELF. Nor does it deserve a proper noun capitalization as some sort of thing to be praised and worshiped.

This isn't aimed at Ronn personally.