Rector’s Reflections
Friday 2nd May 2025
Christian Leadership in Today’s World
So far in the current series of reflections, I have considered two qualities which I feel are important for effective Christian leadership in today’s world: compassion and the search for the common good.
A third quality which I think is needed is a willingness to embrace complexity and messiness.
Our world tends to present issues in binary terms: things are either black or white. People are categorised as heroes or monsters. But life is much more complex than this. I think there is a mixture of good and bad in all of us, and none of us have a monopoly on truth and wisdom. We may disagree with someone, perhaps passionately, but this doesn’t mean that our opponent has nothing worthwhile to say.
Moral and religious issues can be complex. People can and do have different opinions. There is nothing wrong in recognising the complexity of the real world. Complexity is the way it is – and we shouldn’t be frightened of this.
Nor should we be frightened of acknowledging and exploring the messiness within our own lives, and the lives of others.
I think it can be particularly difficult for leaders to acknowledge the complexity and messiness which we know to be all around us. In part, I think this is because we like the idea that our leaders have all the answers – we like to think that they have been given a unique insight which allows them to see clearly, whereas the rest of us muddle around in a cloud of uncertainty.
I think we also like the idea that our leaders live morally perfect lives. We are only too aware of our own failings, but we feel that our leaders should be heroes of moral perfection. And how quick we can be to knock our leaders off their pedestals, when we discover some moral failing in their lives! Our gods have been revealed to be mere human beings, and we find this realisation deeply unsettling.
I think another factor is that in our modern world, we like to be able to communicate briefly and concisely. We are much too busy – or persuade ourselves that we are much too busy- to have the time or desire to engage with the complexity of a particular issue or situation. Earlier today I was looking at a national newspaper which included something which it described as a “long-read”. Well, when was the last time we set aside time for a “long-read”? When was the last occasion that we allowed a leader the time and space they needed to set out their thoughts on an issue in all their detail and complexity? We like quick answers to straightforward questions. But any question worth asking is unlikely to be answered in a few words. It invites a proper conversation, not a soundbite.
Our current unwillingness to allow our leaders to embrace complexity and messiness has three serious consequences. It encourages the trivialisation of public debate. It promotes superficial answers to complex problems. And it places leaders on moral pedestals. Some leaders manage to remain on their moral pedestals for longer than others, but no one remains on it for ever.
So I think our modern world needs leaders who will model a different set of values: leaders who will be honest about complexity and messiness in their own lives, and in the life of the world around them. I think this is particularly true in the life of the church. The church is a complex and often messy place. We need to recognise this when we come to make our decisions.
There are other things we need to recognise as well, and we shall look at some of these in the days ahead.