ACE Journal Fall 2020

Reimagining Leadership IN A SECUL AR AGE

CROSSREADINGS INTO LEADERSHIP Ramona Simut

THE CONFESSIONS OF AN AMBITIOUS LEADER Mark D. Allen

LEADING TO SCRIPTURE THROUGH WRITING: AN INTERVIEW WITH NANCY GUTHRIE

RAISING SHEPHERDS

FEAR IN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP: THE TELOS AND ANTI-TELOS OF TRAINING CHAMPIONS W. Brian Shelton

Tim Laniak

Volu me 5 • Issue 1 Fa ll 2020

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FALL 2020 Mark D. Allen, Executive Editor Benjamin K. Forrest, Managing Editor Jack Carson, Associate Editor Elizabeth Huggins, Assistant to the Managing Editor

Joshua Rice, Creative Director Ashley Holloway, Marketing Director Seth Bingham, Marketing Manager Zach Hayes, Project Coordinator Annie Shelmerdine, Senior Designer Dave Parker, Promotional Writer

/LibertyUACE | @LibertyUACE | envelope ACE@liberty.edu | location-arrow Liberty.edu/ACE

“Reimagining Leadership in a Secular Age,” Faith and the Academy: Engaging Culture with Grace and Truth 5, no. 1 (Fall 2020): A publication of Liberty University Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement

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LEADERSHIP FOR THE OTHER

AGAINST LEADERSHIP

Jack Carson

Benjamin K. Forrest

ON THE WICKET WAY: KINGDOM LEADERSHIP IN A SECULAR WORLD

A LIVING EPISTLE: CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP AS LEADING BY EXAMPLE

Robert Wayne Stacy Mike DeVito

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Contents

8 Leadership for the Other Jack Carson, Academic Marketing Strategist and Adjunct Professor, John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University

38 Fear in Christian Leadership: The Telos and Anti-Telos of Training Champions W. Brian Shelton, Department Chair and Professor of Theology, Asbury University

14 The Confessions of an Ambitious Leader

44 Measuring Success by Your Successors

Mark D. Allen, Executive Editor of Faith and the Academy and Executive Director of the Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University

Bill High, CEO of The Signatry: A Global Christian Foundation

19 Leading to Scripture through Writing: An Interview with Nancy Guthrie

47 A Living Epistle: Christian Leadership as Leading by Example Mike DeVito, Former NFL Player for the New York Jets and the Kansas City Chiefs

Nancy Guthrie, Author and Speaker

50 Daniel in a Secular Age

24 Against Leadership

Dickson Ngama, Teaching Fellow, John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University

Benjamin K. Forrest, Professor of Christian Education and Associate Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University

28 Changes in Academic Librarianship Angela Rice, Dean, Jerry Falwell Library, Liberty University

33 On the Wicket Way: Kingdom Leadership in a Secular World Robert Wayne Stacy, Instructional Mentor and Professor of New Testament, John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University

54 Covenant, Leadership, and the gods of our Age Khalib J. Fisher, Professor of Government, Helms School of Government, Liberty University

58 Raising Shepherds Tim Laniak, Creator of Bible Journey Curriculum and Senior Professor of Biblical Studies, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

61 Crossreadings into Leadership Ramona Simut, Professor at Emanuel University of Oradea, Romania

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66 Leadership as Presence Chaplain Justin Bernard, Liberty Alumni

68 Undergraduate Research Reflections Caleb Brown, B.A. in Philosophy (’19)

INTERDISCIPLINARY ESSAYS 70 Countercultural Love: Relational Engagement from Missions and Counseling Jeff Ritchey, Instructional Designer, Center for Academic Development, Liberty University Brigitte Ritchey, Assistant Professor, Family & Consumer Sciences, Liberty University

73 Penn, Pennsylvania, and a Vision for Leading Interdisciplinary Engagement from Leadership and Social History Jim Fisher, Assistant Professor of Practical Studies, John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University John Knox, Associate Professor of Sociology, School of Behavioral Sciences, Liberty University

76 Pursuing God and the Good: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Cultural Engagement through Biblical Ethics and Writing Alex Mason, Instructor of Ethics, College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University Sarah Rice, Instructor of English, College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University

BOOK REVIEWS 80 The Cross and Christian Ministry: Leadership Lessons from 1 Corinthians Jacob Haley, Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

81 The Cost of Moral Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Parker Williams, Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

82 Biblical Leadership: Theology for the Everyday Leader Matthew Searson, Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

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Training Champions for Christ since 1971

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Jack Carson Academic Marketing Strategist and Adjunct Professor, John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University

Editorial

LEADERSHIP FOR THE OTHER Training Champions for Christ is the mission of Liberty University, and by extension, the task of every faculty member at this institution. Throughout the past two issues of Faith and the Academy, we have explored pieces of that mission. We began discussing what it meant to be “for Christ” within an academic discipline.

The central question of that issue was, “How can we, as educators, bring about genuine Christian formation in the way we train students in their academic disciplines?” We then moved into a discussion about how to form students who will be distinctly “for Christ” within their professional lives.1 This journal will bring the series to an end, discussing the formation of Liberty students as “champions.” This editorial will compare two visions of the “champion,” and it will suggest an overarching telos that should guide our conception of leadership and its purpose. Rather than suggesting how one is to lead, this editorial will reflect on why we lead.

I want to suggest that, in contrast to this othersoriented vision, there is a human predilection for defining “champions” primarily in terms of power and oppression, leadership and success, or achievement and influence. This predilection is found in the heart of Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit to gain power, influence, and significance — to be like God. As a result of the fall, humanity’s natural inclination to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion” has been twisted into a quest for self-elevation (Genesis 1:28, ESV). Each of us are tempted by this competing vision of flourishing — one where fruitfulness, stewardship, and self-sacrifice have been transformed into selfish alternatives. This demonstrates something significant about how we can be tempted to view leadership. Consider, as an illustration, two competing views of the “champion.”

Words matter, and when an institution builds its ethos on a series of words, it is essential for the faculty of that institution to reflect on the exact meaning and spirit behind those words. What does it mean to be a “champion?” And how does this fit with the qualifier to be “for Christ?” Do we simply mean that we train students to be at the top of their disciplines and professions — to be the most successful, lucrative, and famous — all the while maintaining their personal Christian faith and identity?

We can recognize how some outside our institution might see Training Champions for Christ as something primarily triumphalistic, envisioning generations of students who rise to the top of their professions to “champion” Christ, ensuring Christian dominance within the culture. This picture of a “champion,” what we may call the “Champion as Victor,” is centered on winning within one’s professional life.

Throughout the university’s recent We the Champions marketing campaign, our institutional definition of a “champion” was explored. In the launch video, the narrator explains, “While the world sees “champions” as only victors, we will reclaim the word and its meaning.”2 It goes on to affirm that our students, the “champions,” will “be the voice for the voiceless, bring healing to the hurting, and fight for the oppressed.”

This others-oriented vision of Training Champions for Christ is admirable, and it can help us reflect on competing conceptions of leadership, stewardship, and success.

The Champion as Victor

Deep within Liberty University’s DNA is the conviction, “If it is Christian, it ought to be better.”

The vision of the “Victorious Champion” interprets this conviction as a justification for unbridled competitive training. Since we are Christian, we have a mandate to be superior. Therefore, Christians should be the better doctors, the better lawyers, and the better politicians — better than their non-Christian peers.

In this vision, “better” is used to suggest an absolute superiority of skill within professional life.

The vision of a “Champion as Victor” sees the concept of “champion” as separable from the modifier “for Christ.” This view sees many “champions” in the world

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already; there are champions for nearly every cause. The political left has leaders, and the pro-choice movement has heroes. We need our champions. This distorted view of a Liberty champion then adds a couple of courses from Divinity, sprinkles on Convocation, and thus forms a “Champion (Victor) for Christ.” This “champion” is not substantively different than other “champions” throughout the culture, save that they champion Christian issues.

In no way does this “Victor” mentality actively seek to create immoral students; quite the opposite. This vision prides itself on forming students who are profoundly moral and convictionally Christian in their personal lives. However, such a foundation, with theology sprinkled on top as a garnish, often creates carnal victors for whom “business is business.” Theological constructs can simply become indulgences we buy to disguise our hearts’ desire for power and influence — what Martin Luther calls a “theology of glory.”3 This vision uses theology and the riches of the Christian tradition to justify, or even sacralize, self-aggrandizement.

The Need for Something Better The “Champion as Victor” is not the vision of the faculty and administration of Liberty, nor of its founder.

In one sermon, Jerry Falwell Sr. explained that being a “champion” meant more than just achieving success.

It meant being a leader, a visionary, and significantly, a faithful follower of Christ. In fact, in one sermon he gave, he listed five qualifications of a “champion.”4

1. Champions are visionaries.

2. Champions are prayer warriors.

3. Champions have convictions.

4. Champions stay morally pure.

5. Champions are soul winners.

In Dr. Falwell’s vision, deep-seated convictions and a desire to create something good were both necessary to be a “champion.” A sincere devotion to the Gospel and a drive to share it with others are also pivotal. From Liberty’s inception, our vision for success has relied on the Gospel and its ethics.

Although the “Champion as Victor” is not the goal of Liberty University, it is worth reflecting on this possible interpretation of Liberty’s mission, if for no other reason than understanding how many might view the language with which we describe our charge. James Davison Hunter, in his influential work To Change the World, has explored various perceptions of Christian engagement in the public square. He explains that, for some, “the justifications we create are of no real [account]; no matter how you dress it up, every aspect of social life comes down to power and domination. It has always been thus.”5 Nietzsche saw all of life through the lens of the will to power, and in many ways public life and civic discourse in the western world has followed suit.6 Western society has begun to imagine culture as a collection of groups vying for dominance.

Since power in the modern world is not measured by brute strength but by professional expertise, it is easy to see how interpreters of Liberty’s mission could see it as a primarily combative enterprise.

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The onset of secularism has transformed the western social imaginary to see moral claims as tools for social and political machinations.7 Everyone claims to have a vision of the good that deserves dominance. Women have a right to choose, babies have a right to live, each person has a right to pursue the American dream, and the government should distribute wealth to create an equitable and poverty-free society. This constant and contradictory weaponization of moral claims could cause some to view our mission as one centered on creating students in our image, with our ideologies, who are on a quest for glory, backed by a “theology of glory.” In his work, Why Liberalism Failed, Patrick Deneen explores the development of today’s social framework. He explains, “The classical and Christian effort to foster virtue was rejected as both paternalistic and ineffectual. … It was Machiavelli who broke with the classical and Christian aspiration to temper the tyrannical temptation through an education in virtue … [instead] Machiavelli proposed grounding a political philosophy upon readily observable human behaviors of pride, selfishness, greed, and the quest for glory.”8 In subtle ways, it could be quite tempting for us to follow Machiavelli on this. If the rest of the world is on a quest for power, why shouldn’t we train students to go out and pursue control, promote our values, and defend our way of life? The motive for training “Victorious Champions” fits perfectly within the current context of western liberalism. For Christians to maintain influence, there need to be institutions of higher learning that train leaders to rise to the tops of their fields and promote Christian values.

The “Champion as Victor” vision offers this path to influence, but it transforms the intuition to “be fruitful and multiply” into a will to power. Leadership in this model is seen as tool of self-aggrandizement.

The Champion of the Other If society has abandoned the call to cultivation and stewardship in exchange for a contest of power and dominance, how do we model a better call? Since positions of leadership are a common tool used to gather power and dominance, our vision of leadership can serve as an excellent example of our overall goals in student formation. Shaping our students to be leaders who are “Champions of the Other” will serve as a radical witness to a world that does not understand selflessness, sacrifice, and service.

I would like to suggest an underlying ethic to the Christian life that should transform and define our

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understanding of leadership, an ethic that undergirds our claim to form champions who will “be the voice for the voiceless, bring healing to the hurting, and fight for the oppressed.”9 This ethic takes seriously the admonition of Christ in Mark 9 when the disciples were arguing among themselves over which of them was the greatest — perhaps, the victor? “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.”10 This ethic takes seriously the nature of the Gospel, which our students will be championing — a Gospel that is self-sacrificial, others-focused, and centered on a world to come. This ethic takes seriously the example of Christ, who emptied himself, took the form of a servant, and was humble, even to the point of death (Phil 2:7-8).

And importantly for the vision of a “champion,” this ethic takes seriously Christ’s explicit command to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44, ESV). “There is no higher apex of virtue than this command.”11 The culmination of all of the law and the prophets are the dual commands to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Who is harder to love than your enemy? No one. That is why Christ culminates His “greater ethics” discourse of Matthew 5:17-47 with this teaching.12 It is radically otherworldly, and it rejects the drive for selfaggrandizement that subtly whispers, “If you eat of the fruit, you will be like God.” While the “Victorious Champion” approaches life in terms of victory and defeat, power and subjugation, “The Champion of the Other” approaches the role of a “champion” in terms of service, sacrifice, and love.

Reimagining what education should look like, training “The Champion of the Other” involves inculcating virtue within students. “If it is Christian, it ought to be better.” Our students should be the better doctors, the better lawyers, and the better politicians — better than their non-Christian peers. In this vision, “better” is used to suggest living with a higher ethic and a truer vision of human flourishing.

Winning isn’t enough for the “Champion of the Other;” in fact, this champion internalizes the reality that “the first shall be last and the last shall be first,” since “even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Leadership based on these principles goes beyond dispositions and strategies; instead, the “Champion of the Other” has a radically different orientation to life as a whole. We are all well aware of leaders who utilize the “appearance” of service to

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engender sympathy and support, and we have all seen people utilize a “servant leadership” strategy to achieve success in life or ministry. Many of us have seen “manipulative leaders [who] have learned to fake vulnerability … use their ostensible vulnerability to shore up unbalanced authority. These are leaders who can produce tears on command, who share carefully chosen heartfelt anecdotes of personal failure, who seem empathetic and kind … while secretly consolidating their ability to control.”13 However, these approaches still operate on a fallen paradigm, one that seeks personal and professional success as the end goal; service of the other is simply a useful means of achieving that success.

does it mean for them to be Champions for Christ? This will look different in every job and in every field, but without a doubt, for the believer, “leadership is always servanthood — it is always about others’ flourishing, not our own, and it is always directed toward others’ authority, not our own.”14 We will propose that the call to be a “champion” looks much like Paul envisioned for the church; believers are to be Christ’s body on earth (Ephesians 1:22-23). Christ’s mission when He came was to restore what was broken, to serve those who despised Him, and to love a world that didn’t deserve it. Champions for Christ carry forward that mission.

“The Champion of the Other” rejects Machiavelli completely. Instead of seeing leadership as a means of consolidating power, he or she sees leadership and success as a means of restoring good in the world for those around and under a leader. Leadership is a tool, not a goal in-and-of-itself. As a leader is given more power, that leader is able to do more to serve others.

The temptation for self-service becomes greater as a leader gains influence, and the Christian ethic seems more radical the greater one’s power becomes. As the quintessential example of this, Jesus Christ, the greatest of us all, served us all in the most extreme of ways.

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The “good” of leadership is found in what it multiplies; as a consequence, leadership is itself an evil when it is used for evil purposes. This is why we must teach students to pursue leadership as a way to de-emphasize one’s own significance, emphasizing instead the significance of those they lead. Leadership is a tool that allows true Champions for Christ to do just that — champion Christ, His mission, and His glory (1 Corinthians 1). When leadership for leadership’s sake (or, in Liberty terminology, being a “champion” for the sake of being a champion) drives decisions and education, we have bought into a Machiavellian mentality of power baptized with a theology of glory.

When, on the other hand, we educate students to reject the primacy of power, we can invite them to live a cruciform life.

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So why should we lead? We should lead for the good of others, considering them to be more significant than ourselves (Philippians 2:3). Using this telos for leadership, the articles in this journal will explore what it actually looks like for our students to lead Christianly as they enter into their professions; what

For the distinction between these two practices, see Benjamin K. Forrest, “Progressing from ‘A Theology of the Disciplines’ to ‘A Theology for Vocation’,” Faith and the Academy: Engaging Culture with Grace and Truth 4, no. 2 (Spring 2020): 12-15.

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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUTKPXDVo0Q)

See Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed.

Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 32.

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(https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=Ai3S2e7Ygpk)

James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 106–7.

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James Luchte, ed., Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise (London; New York: Continuum, 2008), 10.

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Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 198, 206–7.

Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, Politics and Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 24–25.

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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUTKPXDVo0Q)

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mk 9:33–35.

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Jonathan T Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary, 2018, 202.

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Pennington, 199.

Andy Crouch, Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk & True Flourishing (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, an imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2016), 120–21.

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Crouch, 130.

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Faculty Contribution

Mark D. Allen Executive Editor of Faith and the Academy and Executive Director of the Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University

The Confessions of an Ambitious Leader Tomorrow you have a job interview. A friend mentions casually that she has heard that your potential new supervisor is ambitious. You begin to wonder to yourself, “What does that mean? Does he have a big ego? Is he after money? Power? Recognition? Will he step on me like a rung on a ladder to higher places?”

But then, you pump the breaks on your negativity. You look on the bright side, “Maybe he is a team builder with a high value on serving with excellence. Perhaps, he is driven to make everyone around him better and lead the organization to achieve great things.” Finally, you bottom-line it for yourself, “Well even if he is driven by ego, I would rather work for someone who is pushing toward something, whatever the motivation, than a passive director with no ambition.”

In this article, we will consider ambition and leadership. Would you want to be known as an ambitious leader? Is ambition in a leader a good quality? In general, is it negative, positive, or neutral?

Should we renounce ambition, celebrate it, or do something else with it? Perhaps an ancient bishop can give us some insight into ambition in leadership.

Many think of Saint Augustine as a philosopher or theologian, but he was more than that. He spent the majority of his life shepherding the flock of God as a bishop. Accordingly, his most famous work, Confessions, is not simply his memoirs, but a spiritual autobiography with a pastoral intention to guide others in their journey toward God.1 In Confessions, Augustine wrestles with his own ambition. In so doing, he opens a spiritual window to give us a clearer view of our own ambition and a path toward a rightly directed and realistic ambition that will benefit ourselves and others.2 Considering Augustine’s self-reflections on ambition in his Confessions may in the end help us to understand our own ambitions without the need for such a public confession.

Malformed Ambition In general, Augustine shows respect for his parents, especially for his mother about whom he has almost nothing negative to say. To Augustine, she was truly

a saint. But when it comes to the way his mother, father, and teachers formed his ambitions, he gives strong words of condemnation. He complained, “The people who forced me on were not acting well … they thought only of sating man’s insatiable appetite for a poverty tricked out as wealth and a fame that is but infamy.”3 That is, authority figures forcefully shaped his ambitions toward money and notoriety. They were not concerned mainly for his personal character, but “their primary concern was that I should learn rhetoric and persuasive speech,”4 for these were the chief means to achieve success in the Greco-Roman world of Augustine’s day. While people praised Augustine’s father for the sacrifices he made for his son to put him in the best schools, Augustine later in life judged this as his father’s “shameless ambition” forced upon himself.5 In time, peer pressure and personal hubris joined in with the authority figures in his life to shape and direct Augustine’s ambitions. He admitted that, along with the company of other ambitious students, he began to study “treatises on eloquence”6 longing “to excel, though my motive was the damnably proud desire to gratify my human vanity.”7 In his twenties, he joined with a cult of ambition, a kind of society of deceived and deceiving idolaters, who devoted themselves, in increasingly competitive ways, to their twisted ambitions: “... we pursued trumpery popular acclaim, theatrical plaudits, song-competitions and the contest for ephemeral wreaths. ... I pursued, these things I did, in the company of friends who through me and with me were alike deceived.”8 Augustine’s ambitions eventually drove him to the highest levels of his career, from the margins of the Roman Empire to its very center. He was appointed to the important position of professor of rhetoric in the city of Milan. Augustine’s most recognized biographer, Peter Brown, explains the significance of this role: “As the Imperial court resided in Milan, this was an important appointment. A professor of rhetoric would deliver the official panegyrics on the Emperor and the consuls of the year.”9 Augustine had made it. What now could possibly break him out of his ambitious quest for money and adulation? His inner ambitions had been thoroughly formed by his

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parents, teachers, and colleagues and had acquired the accoutrements of success.

Reflection: Have our ambitions been malformed?

How might our parents, teachers, or other authority figures contribute to our malformation? What part do our contemporary culture and colleagues play in shaping what we want and what we strive for?

What is our personal responsibility in forming our ambitions? Where is God while our ambitions are being misdirected?

Awakening to Unhappiness Augustine’s ambitions drove him to where he wanted to go, but he discovered that the place he ended up was not where he wanted to be. He was successful, but he wasn’t happy. His unhappiness came to a head on a certain day. While he was preparing to deliver a panegyric in honor of the emperor, which should have been the delightful pinnacle of his achievements, his “heart was panting with anxiety and seething with feverish, corruptive thoughts.”10 Traveling through Milan with his friends he noticed a poor, drunk beggar “making merry.”11 He recounts his response: I groaned and pointed out to the friends who were with me how many hardships our idiotic enterprises entailed. Goaded by greed, I was dragging my load of unhappiness along, and feeling it all the heavier for being dragged. Yet while all our efforts were directed to the attainment of unclouded joy, it appeared that this beggar had already beaten us to the goal, a goal which we would perhaps never reach ourselves. With the help of a few paltry coins he had collected by begging, this man was enjoying the

temporal happiness for which I strove by so bitter, devious, and roundabout a contrivance. His joy was not true joy, to be sure, but what I was seeking in my ambition was a joy far more unreal; and he was undeniably happy while I was full of foreboding; he was carefree, I apprehensive.12 Augustine’s eyes were opened to the sad end of his ambition. This awakening began a process of Augustine redirecting his ambitions toward different aims.

Reflection: What are we striving for? If we attain it will it make us happy or secure? Have we had an awakening experience? Is happiness a legitimate goal for our ambitions? If so, what kind of happiness?

Redirecting Ambitions In reality, reorienting the ambitions toward a better goal does not occur in an instant. Misdirected ambitions bring about a kind of pleasure. The public notoriety and material benefits that come with ambition for power and wealth are not cast off easily or quickly. It’s just not practical, and perhaps too risky, to undo the ingrained patterns of ambition. Further, how embarrassing it would be to have to admit you were wrong and return to the old ambitions. Augustine mused within himself, “Wait a little, for those things are very pleasant too; they hold no slight sweetness.

We should not be too ready to shrug them off, for to return to them later would be ignoble. Consider what a fine thing it is for a person to win a reputation. What prize could be more desirable?”13 Eventually, however, Augustine decided that the potential temporal rewards of misaimed ambitions

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were too insecure; whereas, ambitions directed toward God had immediate and sure benefits. He voiced his inner questions to his friends, demanding an answer, “Tell me: where do we hope all our efforts are going to get us? What are we looking for? In whose cause are we striving?”14 In Augustine’s day, hardly any attainment could be higher than to become a member of the circle of “Friends of the Emperor.”

Would they ever attain to that high office? If they did, that position itself, Augustine complains, would be fraught with negotiating dangerous perils. Augustine concludes, “And how long would it take us to get there? Whereas I can become a friend of God here and now if I want to?”15 As we read Confessions and so many of his writings, we observe that Augustine spent the rest of his life redirecting his ambition toward loving God and loving his neighbor in God. His ambition did not cease; no one could ever accuse him of being a spiritually passive, or a laissez-faire type of leader. Though he often considered his pastoral leadership a burden he had to bear and the accoutrements of his leadership were far fewer, the trajectory of his influence trended upward and expanded beyond what he could have ever imagined, not for himself but for God’s purposes.

Reflection: Augustine ultimately left Milan and returned to North Africa with the intention of starting a monastery, but was seized upon and almost forced to become a bishop. Does redirecting our ambitions require us to leave our secular job and enter vocational ministry? Is it realistic to stay in the same job while redirecting our ambitions?

What might that look like?

God’s Good Use of Selfish Ambition Ambition is complicated. Perhaps, we would like to create easy categories to understand ambition; it’s either all good or all bad. Or, there is good ambition and there is bad ambition. While this latter claim is true theoretically, that’s not how it works out in the real life of a fallen world. Augustine lived in the real world. Surprisingly, Augustine claimed that God worked with and through the malformation of his ambitions. First, God used his education for good purposes even though those who forced his learning upon him did it for misdirected ends. Augustine acknowledges the goodness of God’s intentions for him even when other’s motives were not good: “The people who forced me on were not acting well either, but good accrued to me all the same from you, my God. They did not foresee to what use I would put the lessons they made me learn. ... But you, who have

even kept count of our hairs, turned to my profit the misguided views of those who stood over me and me made learn. ... In this way, you turned to my good the actions of those who were doing no good.”16 Second, even as Augustine’s ambitions were being malformed, God was working in Augustine’s struggles, pains, and disappointments to reveal to him a higher way to turn Augustine’s longings and desires to God: “You were even present to me, mercifully angry, sprinkling very bitter disappointments all over my unlawful pleasures so that I might seek a pleasure free from all disappointment. If only I could have done that, I would have found nothing but Yourself, Lord, nothing but You yourself who use pain to make Your will known to us, and strike only to heal ...”17 While Augustine frustratingly pursued misdirected desires, God was kindly amused, knowing that only ambition for God will satisfy the soul: “Very bitter were the frustrations I endured in chasing my desires, but all the greater was Your kindness in being less and less prepared to let anything other than Yourself grow sweet to me.”

Amazingly, God was shaping Augustine for Himself, even as others were working ardently to form his ambitions in the wrong direction toward wealth and prominence.

Reflection: How might God redeem our misdirected ambitions? What good has God brought out of our quest for worldly success? Does the fact that God brings good out of evil intentions justify our wrong motives? How has God used the pain and stresses caused by our ambitions to drive us to Himself? How might have the Joseph narrative in Genesis 37–50 influenced the way Augustine viewed his own story of ambition? How are their stories alike and how are they different?

Realism and Ambition And Augustine lived happily ever after seeking only the love of God and never again directing his ambitions toward the praise of the crowd. No, that’s not how the story goes. Life’s not like that. And Augustine is much too honest to hide the complexities of his ambitions.

His unceasing desire to win the respect and adoration of people particularly haunted him. Not knowing for sure whether his ambitions were directed toward the love of God and people or toward a quest for the love and appreciation of others troubled him deeply.

For him, whether one is serving others well for God or for human praise is uniquely difficult to quantify.

He reasoned that if we want to know if we are driven by wealth, we can simply give away our money. If

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we desire to know just how much we are motivated by lust, we can deny ourselves sexual pleasures. But if we want to know the depth of our longing for the admiration of people, we would be insane to renounce acting kindly toward them or stop leading them with excellence. Respect and admiration often come naturally with doing good things toward others, so the ambition for others to think fondly of us or to admire us is a most insidious temptation. In Confessions, Augustine did not know for sure what was driving his ambitions, so he cried out to God, “You know how my heart groans to You over this, and how my eyes stream with tears; for there is a dangerous infection here, and how far I am clear of it is not easy for me to discern. I am sorely afraid about my hidden sins, which are plain to Your eyes but not to mine.”18 Obviously, Augustine was very honest and realistic when it came to the motivations of his heart. Much of the time, he wasn’t sure what drove his ambition and he was convinced that his reasons for doing public good deeds were often impure. He regularly had multiple reasons for his actions, some good and some bad. James K. A. Smith puts it well: “If you ask him, ‘Are you doing this for God or for your own vanity?’ Augustine’s answer is an honest, ‘Yes.’”19 If we are honest with ourselves, our answer is often “Yes” as well.

Reflection: Is our fear of leading for the wrong reasons keeping us from using the gifts God has given to us? How might we keep a check on what is driving our ambitions? What part might prayer and confession play in purifying our ambitions?

Back to the job interview. Thirty minutes into the interview, you are very pleased with the way things have gone so far. At this point, your interviewer leans forward asking you plainly, “Do you consider yourself ambitious?” Recalling Augustine’s honest journey through both the negative and positive aspects of ambition, you respond with a convincingly authentic: “I must confess ...”

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Revisions 1.6.1

The ideas for this article were generated out of James K. A. Smith’s chapter, “Ambition: How to Aspire” in his highly recommended book, On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2019). Any shortcomings in this article are my own.

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The Confessions, 4.1.1

Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 58.

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The Confessions, 6.6.9

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The Confessions, 6.6.9

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The Confessions, 6.6.9

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The Confessions, 6.19

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The Confessions, 8.6.15

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The Confessions, 1.12.19

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The Confessions, 2.2.4

The Confessions, 8.6.15

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The Confessions, 2.3.5

The Confessions, 1.12.19

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The Confessions, 3.4.7

The Confessions, 2.2.4

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The Confessions, 3.4.7

The Confessions, 10.37.60

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Smith, 91.

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Guest Interview

LEADING TO SCRIPTURE THROUGH WRITING: AN INTERVIEW WITH NANCY GUTHRIE A special thank you to Nancy Guthrie, who, during the quarantine days of last spring, took some time for a digital interview with Ben Forrest, Managing Editor of Faith and the Academy. Nancy is an author and speaker whose current projects are aimed at infiltrating biblical theology into the women’s Bible studies in the local church.

Forrest: This issue of Faith and the Academy is about

reimagining leadership, so we wanted to ask a variety of leaders to contribute based on their experience and their background. Can you tell us a bit about your background and the events of your life that have brought you to this unique vocation where you have had such vast experiences in leading and influencing others?

Guthrie: As you go through your life, it is hard to

anticipate how God is going to use all of the variety of experiences in your life to use you in significant ways in the future. From where I am now at 57, I can certainly see his hand of providence from the home he put me in, from where I went to college, and from the first job I had after college. During my first job, which was at the Christian publishing company, Word Incorporated in Waco, Texas, I began to work with some of the leading Christian communicators of the day. I had the opportunity to see up close how they communicated the Scriptures, how they dealt with aspects of ministry, such as money, ego, opportunity, and mission. It allowed me to see how different people operated in terms of ministry and to learn from both their positive and negative examples. I could not have imagined how that would help me going forward.

I left working for the publishing company when I had my son, Matt, who is now 29 and started my own media relations business serving various Christian

The story of Jesus in the Gospels includes all kinds of interesting people — some who claimed to be saints but proved to be scoundrels, as well as scoundrels who were transformed into saints. In “Saints and Scoundrels in the Story of Jesus,” Nancy Guthrie provides a fresh look into what shaped and motivated people such as John the Baptist, Peter, the Pharisees, Zacchaeus, Judas, Caiaphas, Barabbas, Stephen, and Paul. Join her as she reintroduces us to these biblical characters, helping us to see more clearly the ways in which they reveal the generous grace of Jesus toward sinners.

Guthrie, Nancy. Saints and Scoundrels in the Story of Jesus.

Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020. $16.99

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publishers. Then, in 1998, I gave birth to a daughter named Hope. Hope was born with a rare metabolic disorder called Zellweger Syndrome, which meant that she had a short and limited life and was only with us for six months. Because a recessive gene trait caused the fatal syndrome, my husband and I took surgical steps to prevent another birth, but evidently that didn’t work. I discovered a year and a half after our daughter Hope died, that I was pregnant again. This time, I walked through that pregnancy knowing that I was going to have another child who was going to die. Now, having worked in Christian publishing right after my daughter Hope died, so many people had asked me, “Are you going to write a book?” There was a part of me that was very interested in that because I felt like I had learned some things and I had some things to share, but over the years I had also observed a lot of people with incredible experiences exploit them in terms of a book. I thought, “If I wake up one day and find that I am exploiting this experience somehow for myself, that would be too painful to bear,” so I decided that I was not going to write a book. Then, in the midst of the second pregnancy, I was at a Bible study and the teacher was teaching on the Parable of the Talents. In essence, the servants were entrusted with various kinds and amounts of resources with one expectation: that they would be invested for a return for the master. I remember that day vividly. The teacher asked, “What has God put in your hands?” I had a great deal of understanding and experience about books and publishing, I had knowledge and love of the Scriptures, and I had some communication gifts.

On top of that, I had this experience that perhaps gave me some credibility so that people might be willing to listen to what I had to say. So, I went home that day and I started writing my first book called "Holding on to Hope." And honestly, I did not know if anyone would care to publish it. I had been in publishing long enough to know that a lot of people write books about the loss of their children, but I decided that putting it down on paper was a way to preach to myself the truths I had learned the first time around as I walked through the loss of a second child. In fact, the book was published, and it came out on what would have been, my son, Gabriel’s first birthday. With the publishing of a book, people begin to ask for me to come and speak.

That was where my more public ministry began, in terms of teaching the Bible. Around that time in 2002, so much of my experience with women in ministry had been with women who had a story of some kind or a motivational talk and went around and gave it. I did not want to go around and tell my sad story, so I wanted to figure out how I could use my story to teach the Scriptures. It is the Scriptures that have power. In

fact, to this day, I hear from people wanting my advice on writing a book because they want to share their story. What I tell them over and over again, is, “What you have to figure out is how to use your story to tell God’s story. Your story might have the power to inspire someone or move someone, but there is only one story that has the power to make dead people alive.” That is the story of the person and work of Jesus Christ and that is the story that I want to tell. That is the only story that has real life-giving power.

It is the Scriptures that have power … you have to figure out to use your story to tell God’s story.

While your story might have the power to inspire someone or move someone, there is only one story that has the power to make dead people alive.

Forrest:

I really like that you are saying you are stewarding your story, but connecting this minor story to the major story of history — and part of the way to do this is to use well the opportunities you have had in leading, writing, and speaking. This perspective counters our natural temptations in leadership. What is your advice for people who see leadership as an elevation that they have rightfully earned, not as an influence given by God to bring Him glory and to make Him known? How can you articulate the difference to people who are thinking wrongly about leadership?

Guthrie: Well I think one thing I figured out early

on was that I didn’t want to be out there trying to push doors open for myself, but that I would experience a great deal of joy and freedom by walking through the doors that God had clearly opened for me. What that meant for me was that my focus went into preparing myself to walk through whatever doors God opened for me. Now I wish I could say to you that I have always been completely consistent with this, but it is a day by day, year by year, opportunity by opportunity, choice you have to keep making — to trust God to open up doors for you rather than be heavy into self-promotion.

It is a tricky thing as a person who writes books to try to constantly discern my heart motives. Am I saying yes to this or am I saying no to that because of concern for my own self, my reputation, my being known, or the impression it is going to make on people? Or am I, as consistently as I know how, seeking to run everything through the filter of being a good and wise steward of what God has entrusted me with, for a return for

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His kingdom? My focus on preparing myself to walk through whatever doors the Lord had for me has looked like a lot of reading and studying because I am handling God’s Word. I want to be a person that rightly divides the Word of Truth. So that has meant I read a lot of good books and, since 2009, I have been taking seminary courses both in person and online. I am a lifelong learner, not only of how to handle and how to interpret God’s Word but also how to communicate it effectively. That’s the role I am in, whether that is writing a book, or an excellent blog post, or standing up in front of people teaching the Bible. All of those things require some skills, and I hope I have better skills in that today than I did 15 years ago. I think I do because I have sought out ways to become better at both understanding and communicating the Scriptures.

That is the way I have prepared myself to walk through the doors that God has opened for me, and he has opened a lot of doors for me which I am incredibly grateful. He has also closed some doors, for which I am also grateful.

Forrest:

Writing and communication are your gifts, and the Lord has called you to study. I would certainly agree that writing is an aspect of leading, but it is maybe not the prototypical type of leading we think of first.

How have you seen writing as an opportunity to lead?

Guthrie: Well, I think one way is seeing a need that

I determined to be on a mission to meet. For me, that need has been to create Bible study materials for women that are theologically driven and Christ-centered. One thing I have observed is that a lot of women’s Bible study in the local church can [feel] needs oriented, celebrity driven, and merely inspirational. The Bible studies I have written represent my effort, which is my mission, to infiltrate women’s Bible study in the local church with biblical theology. By that I mean, I want women’s Bible study in the local church to approach the Bible with the sense that the Bible is one story, centered on the person and work of Jesus Christ. As we approach the Bible that way, we are better at not jumping so quickly to making the Bible all about ourselves. Instead, we see that the Bible is at its heart, all about Christ, and has implications for us as we are joined to Christ. Since 2009 I have been writing Bible studies that pursue this end. More recently I’ve launched a series of workshops at which I train women on how to understand the storyline of the Bible and the themes the divine Author has written into it. This helps us to not only understand the Bible rightly, it helps us to make much of what the Bible makes much of, instead of trying to make the Bible about what we want it to be about.

Offering these workshops around the country has been thrilling because women are so hungry to learn and to be challenged. They have left the workshops with more of a passion to approach their Bibles with curiosity and a desire for a deeper understanding. Biblical theology equips them to see the beauty, and the sufficiency, and the necessity of Jesus Christ more clearly, which fans the flame of love for Christ in their hearts and in their lives.

Forrest:

I also love what you do through your podcast, Help Me Teach the Bible. What has stood out to you in precepts and examples regarding leadership from these individuals that you have interviewed and learned from?

Guthrie:

Well for one thing, I have to say I have been very picky about who I have interviewed. I look for people who approach the Bible with a framework of biblical theology. One thing I have noticed is that these people, as much as they know (and I have talked to people who know so much) are still learning. So often I will stop someone I am interviewing because they express something that they just learned or are trying to understand more. I think that helps teachers who are listening to the podcast to understand that no teacher has fully arrived, but we are all seeking to be better handlers of God’s Word. We are all learning how to handle God’s Word better. To talk with people for whom you have a great esteem and to find out that they still listen back to things they taught or read things they wrote a while ago and want to do better — I have found that personally encouraging and I think my listeners do as well.

Forrest:

How has biblical theology informed your vision for biblical leading? How does the Christcentered vision for leadership teach us about what Christ might have to say about out leading?

Guthrie:

One very significant biblical theme that I talk about some at our workshops is the theme of suffering before glory. The place we see it most significantly is in Jesus Christ himself. Jesus did not count equality with God something to be grasped but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant.

Humbling Himself to the point of death and even humbling Himself to a death on a cross, which is even lower. But what happens? God highly exalted Him. God has given Him the name that is above every name (Philippians 2:6-9). We see this pattern of suffering before glory in the life, death, resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus. I have just written a new book about the life of Jesus called "Saints and Scoundrels in the Story of Jesus." One of the people I look at is

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Stephen. When we read his story in the book of Acts, it seems that the writer, Luke, is trying to communicate something about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. As Stephen proclaimed the Word of God, he was accused, attacked, and finally stoned to death.

Yet even as he was dying, he anticipated entering into the glory of God. I think this understanding of what is normative for a disciple of Jesus is helpful for leaders, because sometimes we can become pampered or demanding. It is important to know that we are disciples first and foremost, and we should expect our lives to take the same pattern of Jesus’ life. We will experience suffering in this world. And the same thing that enabled Jesus to endure suffering in this world and enabled Stephen to endure suffering in this world is what will enable us to endure suffering. In Hebrews 12 we read that “for the joy set before Him [Jesus] endured the cross.” Anticipation of the glory to come in the future is what strengthens us for the suffering in the present. I think that means for us as leaders is that we must stop grasping for glory in this world. We need to watch our tendency to try and take glory for ourselves here and now. We should be willing to suffer for Christ and with Christ, knowing that as we do, we can be confident of also sharing in his glory. As we humble ourselves now, as we serve now, and as we are willing to suffer in fellowship with Jesus Christ here and now, we grow in anticipation of the glory to come.

Forrest:

Are there lessons that you wish you had known about leadership that you apply today?

Guthrie:

I think one of the biggest challenges for leaders, not excluding me, is to humbly and rightly respond to criticism with perception. When you put yourself out there, you get criticized. Perhaps the best

advice I got came from a pastor of mine maybe about twenty years ago. I was getting criticized for a class I was leading, and I came to him and asked him how he dealt with this. He said that when he is criticized he listens to it squarely, and examining himself to see if there is any truth in it. That’s hard because our natural tendency is to defend ourselves. Recently I got a long, harshly critical email, and it stung. But I looked at and thought, “What do I need to hear in this?” Honestly, there were some things that I needed to hear in it, and I needed to make some adjustments about how I handled some of the things the person pointed out. There were also some things the person pointed out that were not true.

I had to think about what could have been at work in her life that would have caused her to respond the way she did. I responded, thanking her for pointing these things out, and that I would consider it all carefully.

These are the kinds of things that put my stewardship mantra to the test. Being a good steward for a return for His kingdom means being willing to accept criticism and make adjustments if needed.

Forrest:

Is there anything that you want to share with our students or faculty about what makes leadership Christian?

Guthrie: I heard David Helm say, “The Word of God

does the work of God in the world.” That has really shaped a lot of choices that I have made and continue to make. It has been very freeing for me because I fully believe and expect that God will work through His Word. Regardless of the immediate response that I see or don’t see, and regardless of my limitations and my failures, I can expect that God will work through His Word as I give it out.

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Faculty Contribution

Benjamin K. Forrest Professor of Christian Education and Associate Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University

AGAINST LEADERSHIP I’ve been assigned, by the managing editor of this esteemed publication, to write an article with the title, “Against Leadership.” I can only assume that such an assignment comes from his imagined sense of irony — tasking me to write against myself — for my education, career, and publication record has, in many ways, been spent in pursuit of leadership, education, and leading.

But alas, here I write on … against leadership.

I hope the purpose of such an assignment is not to write against leadership in a holistic sense, but against the way that leadership is conceptualized and cultivated in much of our culture. Tackling “a-leadership” holistically surely lies beyond the scope and effect of such a short essay, and beyond what anyone would want to argue for — for it is eminently evident that leadership is necessary in our culture. So, I assume that the topic must be purposefully delimited to a segment of leadership that deserves to be written against. Two types of targets loom large when considering what critiques to levy against leadership. Thus, I will focus the “againstness” of my leadership dissent to the targets of leadership education and leader failure.

Targeting Leadership Education The easiest target to take aim at on the leadership landscape is the idea of leadership education and the proliferation of academic degrees in leadership. The reasons such a target is easily acquired in the sights of the skeptic is that the evidence of true leadership is realized in context rather than in classroom, in character rather than characteristics, and a longer term definition of success rather than immediate returnson-investment. Because leadership is by nature praxis, the academic pursuit of leadership can ultimately lead to inaction and theoretical assent rather than the transformation of a student to a sage.

Target #1: The Context of Learning Leadership Leadership is learned best in the context of leading rather than in the confines of a classroom. Yet, our academic pursuits situate much of leadership learning

in the context of texts. Books are valuable, but texts can only teach so much because leadership is an applied practice. Those looking into a leadership classroom, from the outside, often come to the conclusion that the academic pursuit of leading is an amorphous, softscience — at best. It does not have distinct shape, nor does it have any lines of demarcation between where it starts and stops. Chemists, within the academy, study chemistry. They observe reactions and walk through molecular equations. Their contribution to the field comes in the training of students for a wide variety of scientific vocations. Historians, in the academy, coalesce information from various mediums into understandable interpretations of the past for future wisdom and insight. Technology, and the professors who teach in these fields, invent and improve the practices of daily life. But leadership learned only in the classroom does not necessarily produce leaders.

Target #2: Characteristic Adoption and Behaviorism Leadership is based on character rather than simply the adoption of characteristics. The available leadership literature turns many away; it seems like never ending lists of characteristics that will theoretically create leaders. We are told that leadership is 7 habits, 10 practices, 18 principles, and 101 characteristics. This numerically prescriptive approach is both simplistic and overwhelming. Surely it is not the intent of the authors to propose that leadership is simply behavior adoption; yet, there is a temptation to turn this literature into a simple list of characteristics to adopt.

It is curious to some, why are there seven habits instead of eight, or ten practices instead of five or fifty? Behaviorism, like the training of Pavlov’s dogs, supposes that input A equals output B. Leadership proposals that see the adoption of characteristics as true leadership errantly assume that input A (let’s say the characteristic of vision) will lead to output B (visioneering leadership). While vision can lead to visioneering, it is not as simple as input/output. Too much of the leadership literature, which theoretically

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forms the base of a leadership education, at the very least implies such behaviorism. If you, the reader, can copy these characteristics or attributes then you too will be a leader. And this may be actual, in many cases. But many attempt this type of adoption — in part or in public — and yet fail to lead because leadership is more than the characteristics of the charismatic. Leadership is an idea, a discipline, a thing where virtue and character form the necessary foundation for such characteristics.

Building characteristics on a faulty foundation that lacks true virtue leads to a structure that cannot bear its own weight.

Target #3: The Measurement of Leadership Success Successful leadership is not always recognized immediately, and unsuccessful leadership is often given the moniker of success far too quickly. Success is a worthy, but tricky pursuit. In its essence, success is more multifaceted than we often recognize. The temptation is to pick a singular avenue in which to pursue success. Yet, reaching this destination in one facet of life does not indicate success in the other facets.

In fact, pursuing this elusive goal of success can lead to failure in the many other spheres of life.

Leadership education often tends to miss this holistic and reflectional perspective. Because leadership is taught in the context of a classroom and in the training of an individual for a career, it is tempting to focus the educational pursuit toward a singular target, forgetting the interplay between the spheres of life.

This temptation is understandable for professors who aim at making leaders in a particular sphere or field — they tend to aim at that specific target. Yet, hitting

that particular target often results in leaders successful in one sphere and failures in many spheres. Success must be more holistically defined so that it reminds the learner that Christian leaders have theological, spiritual, relational and then vocational responsibilities in which they are called to lead.

Targeting Leadership Failure In addition to these, critiques against leadership can easily point out the many failures of those placed on privileged platforms. Leaders throughout the world (and the church) constantly rise to prominence only to fall in failure and disgrace. These failures add additional targets to aim our skepticism at. Reasons for these failures range from the spiritual to the operational to the personal.

Target #4: Spiritual Failures of Leadership Leaders fall due to sin when it is allowed into the habits of their heart. Leaders (whether trained in the field or not) often turn to the right or the left (c.f., Deuteronomy 5:32, Proverbs 4:27), which results in personal and corporate consequences brought by a loving Father who disciplines those He loves (Deuteronomy 8:5; Proverbs 3:12; Hebrews 12:6-11).

Surely we recognize when Christian leaders fall into sin — especially when these leaders have had a pastoral, spiritual, or moral platform from which they spoke.

Target #5: Operational Failures of Leadership Leaders also fail operationally. This, in some ways, is perhaps the most surprising of the list — but certainly

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one that is easy to recognize. Many have seen the credentialed rise, only to later fail in spite of their advanced degrees declaring them to be masters and doctors of leadership. Surely we have high standards upon those called doctors of medicine, and we expect their prescriptions are without error. In fact we as a society require that they have insurance to guard against their failures. But those called to be doctors of leadership may — or may not — have the same proficiency in their field, and there is no insurance to guard against their operational blunders.

Target #6: Personal Failures of Leadership This is a wide target that can incorporate many failures. Here, Peter Scazzero would include emotional failures,1 children of workaholic leaders would include parental failures, and spouses left behind would point to the temptations toward relational failures. Personal failures include a variety of shortcomings that plague many leaders.

Sanctifying Leadership These are fair critiques to target; yet, after all has been said, I am still for leadership. I understand, however, why many question leadership as an educational end with such targets easily aimed at. Yet perhaps these targets actually help us to see why we must be for leadership, and how a Christian view of leadership might image more accurately the varying types of leading we readily see in the world and in the Christian community.

Leadership, position or degree, does not automatically make a sinner a saint. The goals of a leadership education, stated theologically, are to take individuals born in sin and transform them into people with the capacity to lead others in holiness on a journey toward a goal that is not their own. This requires sanctification.

Within such a context, leadership education is thus understood as a vehicle for sanctification. But it does not guarantee the sanctification of the student; education is not the divine means of redemption (and this is certainly true for leadership education). Instead, leadership education aims to take sinners and make them equipped sinners — equipped to lead others in a particular direction — again, not one of their choosing.

In the big picture, Christian leaders are universally called to lead others in the direction to which God has called them. But in order to accomplish such a lofty goal, this type of leadership must be married to a host of modifiers. Such a task requires continual,

faithful, humble, and submissive obedience in leadership endeavors. The potential list of modifiers necessary for such a leadership task is nearly endless. In essence, when leaders fail to appropriate these modifiers in their leading they find themselves falling short of the opportunities to lead which they have been given.

Failure to lead continually means that the leader has stopped and thus the followers have stopped. Failure to lead faithfully means that the leader will ultimately replicate unfaithfulness. Failure to lead humbly does not reflect the incarnational qualities of Christ who took the form of a servant.

All of this requires sinners to grow in sanctification, and sanctification is not necessarily the consistent result of a leadership education. Taking sinners and teaching them to lead assists them in at least one (and often many) of the steps toward sanctification, but it does not accomplish the entirety of the task; it was never meant to do so. Thus, we must recognize leadership education as only a part of the redemptive process. It takes people willing to be used, and it gives them tools that they can use to lead. But, like the sad story of Solomon, who had wisdom but failed to apply it faithfully — the tools of a leader must be used repeatedly throughout our lives in both length and breadth. For it is only in continual fidelity to the sanctifying call of Christ and then our calling of others (e.g., “follow me as I follow Christ,” 1 Corinthians 11:1), that we find a true definition of leadership success.

Viewing leadership education as a part of the journey toward sanctification should elicit an understanding among Christians that leaders too have not yet arrived.

They, like those that follow them, are on a journey that will not find a destination in perfection this side of eternity. And while leaders should be held to a higher standard, their faults, failures, and shortcomings should not dissuade us from the recognition that we must be for leadership. We should hold with fervent expectation a high standard for leaders, one that reflects God’s standards, while at the same time holding to a theological understanding of the Romans 7 paradigm, where even leaders too “do that which they do not want to do and do not do that which they want.”

Leaders and followers are both born in Adam, and our recognition of this reality should not lead us toward skepticism of the potential for good leadership, but should instead remind us of the need for our own continued sanctification as we are called from dark to light, from death to life, and from enemy to heir.

Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2015).

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CENTER for APOLOGETICS & CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT

Check Out Our Recent Faculty Publications LUAPOLOGETICS.COM

Biblical Worship: Theology for God’s Glory* Benjamin K. Forrest, Walter C. Kaiser Jr., and Vernon M. Whaley *Available Feb. 21

The Inquisitive Christ: 12 Engaging Questions Cara L.T. Murphy

The History of Apologetics: A Biographical and Methodological Introduction Benjamin K. Forrest, Joshua D. Chatraw, and Alister E. McGrath

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Faculty Contribution

Angela Rice Dean, Jerry Falwell Library, Liberty University

CHANGES IN ACADEMIC LIBRARIANSHIP Every librarian has heard the statement, “Oh, you’re a librarian! I love to read too! I would love to be a librarian.” This assumption — that all librarians do every day is read — draws a collective moan from every librarian in the world. While some may still envision us dressed in our very sensible shoes, our hair in buns, accosting every library patron with a “shoosh,” in truth, very few librarians live up to the “Silence Czar” stereotype: they are rarely, if ever, proverbial sticks in the mud, jealous keepers of the card catalog, or shooshers-in-chief. And while many librarians love to read, preserving an absolutely silent space in which they can pursue that hobby undisturbed does not fall within their job description.

In reality, libraries, particularly academic libraries, have undergone a revolutionary shift in the past few decades. As campuses (and their students) have embraced new technologies and understandings of customer experience, academic libraries have had to bend and flex accordingly. Gone are the days in which library spaces consist primarily of long pods of tables at which students pore over their biology notes; gone are the days when an unfortunate coed might lose himself in the rabbit warren of dusty book stacks. Gone are the days where librarians existed mostly to help a student locate a book with a confusing call number. Instead, library spaces on college campuses serve as centers for academic collaboration, multimodal learning, digital experience and production, and learning-centered creative experience. Moreover, they contribute to the cocurricular experience by housing and hosting coffee shops, special collections, performances, and even — as Liberty’s Jerry Falwell Library memorably did — stress-relieving llamas, who simply would not agree to “shoosh.”

The challenge facing the leaders of these dynamic campus focal points grows from the need both to manage and to thrive in the midst of what amounts to continual sea change. At the same time, one constant remains: the passion to serve others and foster curiosity. Solomon’s teaching that “there is nothing

new under the sun” is timely for this season of continual innovation, in that the desire to assist others remains a core trait for every librarian. In fact, it is this desire to serve and to foster growth that positions academic librarians as models of how change might not just be managed but embraced. During an era of constant change in higher education, the campus library occupies a prominent role in both leading and disseminating change — a change that, if led rightly, can increase the impact the campus has on students for the rest of their lives.

Even before COVID-19 upended higher education in the spring of 2020, higher education leaders in the United States had repeatedly acknowledged the “uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity” inherent in the educational landscape.1 From unworkable longterm business models to continually shifting student needs to serious and sustained questions about the value of higher education in the marketplace, higher education administrators, including university librarians, have had to respond quickly to a series of pressing demands. Take a series of examples: •

A 2017 survey of 183 university administrators working in the budget and financial planning sectors found that 47% believe their institutions cannot last beyond the next 5-10 years with their current business model.2

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The demand for student mental health services increased 30% between 2009 and 2015, while enrollment increased only 5%, per a 2015 report by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health.

Demand has since increased.3

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An analysis of the Collegiate Learning Assessment scores of 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions found that 45% of those students showed no significant improvement during their first two years of college.4

Student needs are changing, learning needs to be redefined and re-understood, and all this needs to be accomplished with limited resources. And

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university libraries often serve as a change-leader, offering students a space to decompress, socialize, or be creative; a place to explore and discern their Godgiven calling through research and creative inquiry; and a way to — through sharing the library’s spaces and resources — find how He fits into the larger fabric of society.

Academic librarians have spent a great deal of time in recent years considering how libraries might best adapt to and lead change on their campuses.

Conferences of the American Library Association (ALA) offer multiple sessions on change management at each and every meeting, and in these participants have spoken to the concerns and opportunities that face library leadership across the U.S. For instance — and not surprisingly — they have discussed the fact that, yes, change is hard, and people do not like it. More specifically, change means more time spent training people and less time spent accomplishing tasks (how will the books get cataloged if we’re all in staff meeting?) Change means that mistakes will be made (what if we can’t get the proxied links to work?)

Change means organizational structures may have to shift (will Sarah be all right if she has to report to Joseph?) Change sometimes comes too quickly or as the fallout of another decision made about another sector of the university (do we really have to share our study rooms with all those clubs and organizations?).

Steven Bell, a librarian at Temple University, argues that at this point, librarians need to be changeready, to consider change “a holistic process, a cycle of activities with which we stay engaged.”5 This means accepting change as a constant and treating adaptation as a core job skill — not as an unpleasant but occasional guest.

Those blessed enough to lead libraries through change know that the skills required in this role are also those that can benefit the campus as a whole, and the Kingdom of God more broadly. These skills include finding ways to collaborate with and to encourage growth in people of widely varying personalities and temperaments, discerning a right path among many possible ones, and balancing students’ and faculty’s desires with the mission of the university and the resources available. It is not so different, in fact, from the approach to church management that Tim Keller describes in his roadmap for church growth.

The bigger the organization, the more it needs a unifying vision and purpose, and the more nimble that organization needs to be, the more carefully built must be its processes and mechanisms for response.6 A well-run library, like a well-run church, can adapt

quickly because its people know its priorities, its leaders are capable and well instructed, and it has processes in place to assure that any decisions made contribute to a common goal.

Library leaders have had an opportunity over the past few decades to adopt what Carol Dweck famously called a “growth mindset.” Dweck defines the growth mindset as self-aware people planning for future growth and learning opportunities such that when a challenge comes they will thrive on it.7 By contrast, the fixed mindset understands a person’s qualities to be “carved in stone,” which “creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over.”8 A growth-mindset librarian approaches the transition to the new catalog system as an opportunity to use resources more prudently, to assist learners more effectively, and — as a secondary goal — to coach younger employees through a challenging process that will ultimately benefit both them and the organization as a whole.

A fixed-mindset librarian would prefer to leave things the way they are, even if that way is obviously worse.

Thus, typical change management models, such as Kotter’s well-known eight-step model, foreground the importance of people-management throughout any change process. Kotter’s steps proceed from the emotive work of creating a sense of urgency (“we need to make this change because if we don’t…!”), to consolidating group identity (building a coalition, forming and communicating a shared vision, seeking volunteers), to taking concrete steps (removing barriers, achieving some short-term wins), to finally accelerating into what he classifies as real change.

Kotter assumes a top-down organizational structure, in which management identifies an area for improvement then invites the appropriate stakeholders into a conversation and takes the concrete steps to bring that change about. Yet at the same time, he knows that change cannot begin and end at the top; it needs to spread throughout an organization. Kotter says that change requires about 70-90% leadership and 10-30% management, so the term “change management” fails to capture what the process truly requires.9 In fact, Kotter argues that effective, lasting change — the sort academic libraries have come to see as a constant — is really a culture shift. It is not a management of processes, an implementation of programs, or a revision of policies; it is what happens “after [a] new behavior produces some group benefit for a period of time, and after people see the connection between the new actions and the performance improvement.”10

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Other models of change management also highlight the importance of understanding people’s individual needs and the organizational culture more broadly.

Kurt Lewin’s “Unfreeze, Changing, Refreezing” model, the classic first text on change management, discusses the need that groups, even whole cultures, feel for equilibrium.11 We must believe that our change will lead to a better, more stable state of normalcy, or we will resist it. Pettigrew and Whipp suggest an “emergent” approach to change that both starts and ends with people, beginning with a process of environmental assessment (judging what sort of change is both possible and best in the environment) and ending with strategic human resource management and managerial coherence.12 Even change theorists with a keen eye to the system as a whole, such as Peter Senge, who focuses on the ramifications of change for how systems interrelate in an organization, sees human learning as the key to success. Senge, like Dweck, traces an organization’s effectiveness to each individual’s ability to steward his own growth, and he thus urges people not to think of themselves in terms of their position or title, not to fixate on external threats or small-scale goals, and not to pin blame on management teams.13 Rather, good leaders coach those they work with to think in systems — to see the whole picture, and to ask the bigger questions about, for example, why a student couldn’t find a book in the stacks, rather than simply fetching that book for the student and complaining about his poor skills.

The academic library, perhaps more than any other space on campus, relies on a series of tightly interrelated systems to run, and it is the role of the library leader to build systems that embody the skylevel values of the campus, that function within the surface-level structures, and that harmonize with the below-the-surface assumptions that drive individuals’ behavior.14 In the case of JFL, it is my responsibility to assure that our systems contribute to Training Champions for Christ, that they work within our existing campus technology infrastructure and physical plant, and that they can be successfully used by our stakeholders.

This is, I would argue, not just a practical approach to library leadership, but a deeply biblical one as well.

Throughout Scripture, we see examples of older or more experienced people teaching the younger, not typically in a classroom setting but simply as they go about their lives — in workplaces, as they walk along the road, as they sit at dinner together. Jesus chose

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not to lecture His disciples but to live alongside them, instructing them in the way the world worked, its systems and its motivations, by entering it alongside them. He coached and mentored, and then He sent them out to do as they had been taught. Jesus knew each of His trainees intimately, and He understood “the way the world [was] showing up for them” individually well enough to help them to function within it in a way that made sense for them.15 Similarly, in Matthew 25:14-30, we see the story of a master who leaves his home to travel, entrusting his three servants with varying amounts of money.

While we do not know the instructions the master leaves with his servants, two of the three immediately put the money to work, using the lessons they have presumably learned in his employ to make a profit.

The third — a fixed-mindset servant no doubt — hides the money away and does nothing with it. The master, when he returns, was pleased with the growth mindset he saw in two of the servants and displeased with the third. Learning happens in the trenches, in a process of coaching and mentoring in which the learners come to share the vision and understand the means by which culture functions, and then — when the master is away — learning becomes action and good is achieved.

organization’s focus on the mission or the need for wise resource deployment reminds others that they are truly valuable.

Academic librarians have never lost their passion to serve and their desire to help others develop academically has never changed, but the ways in which we do it has. Even in the midst of all this flux, it is a blessing to see how readily biblical models of leadership and stewardship continue to shape how we approach our work.

Monica Davis and Matthew Fifolt. “Exploring Employee Perceptions of Six Sigma as a Change Management Program in Higher Education.”

Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, vol. 40, no. 1 (2018): 81-93.

1

Ellie Bothwell, “US Universities’ Business Models ‘Unstainable,’ Planners Warn.” Times Higher Education (November 26, 2017).

2

Center for Collegiate Mental Health (CCMH). 2015 Annual Report. Penn State University, 2015, https://sites.psu.edu/ccmh/ files/2017/10/2015_CCMH_Report_1-18-2015-yq3vik.pdf.

3

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2011).

4

Steven Bell, “From Change Management to Change-Ready Leadership: Leading from the Library.” Library Journal (March 1, 2018).

5

Timothy Keller. “Leadership and Church Size Dynamics: How Strategy Changes with Growth.” Cutting Edge, Vineyard USA, (Spring 2008).

6

Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York: Random House, 2006) 7

In the academic library of the twenty-first century, change is a constant, and continual learning is the only way to weather it gracefully. Library leaders can model and coach their team through this state of continual transition in a way that readies them to not only work more effectively in the library space, but also contribute to fulfilling the mission of the campus. Clearing spaces for research week or learning to produce effective digital displays models a commitment to encouraging students’ creativity and desire for interactivity. Overseeing teams of library staff negotiate effectively with software vendors assures a prudent use of the university’s resources and models respectful business relationships with those outside of the campus bubble. Inviting younger staff to join in working with a faculty member to deliver instructional materials in an alternative format, or to offer the library’s space for an in-depth research experience, teaches the invaluable skills of working with an expert on a project where he may be out of his depth — and, at the same time, of listening hard and humbly. And finding prudent, resourceful, and creative ways to adapt the library’s services to customer expectations without losing the

8

Dweck, 6.

John P. Kotter, Leading Change (Boston: Harvard Business School P, 1996).

9

10

Kotter, 156.

Kurt Lewin, “Frontiers in Group Dynamics: Concept, Method and Reality in Social Science; Social Equilibria and Social Change.” Human Relations (1 Jun 1947): 5-41.

11

Andrew Pettigrew and Richard Whip, Managing Change for Competitive Success (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).

12

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization 2nd Ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1990).

13

Edgar H. Shein and Peter Shein, Organization Culture and Leadership 5th Ed (Hoboken: Wiley, 2017).

14

James Flahetry, Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others (Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999).

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Faculty Contribution

33 Robert Wayne Stacy Instructional Mentor and Professor of New Testament, John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University

ON THE WICKET WAY: KINGDOM LEADERSHIP IN A SECULAR WORLD Arguably, one of the most important works in the English language is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress: From This World to That Which Is to Come.

Originally written from prison in the late 17th century, The Pilgrim’s Progress has never been out of print.1 Composed as an allegorical dream narrative, Bunyan describes the epic journey of every Christian (Bunyan’s central character is allegorically named “Christian.”) Christian faces distractions, challenges, and perils along the way but, with helpful guides, stays on the narrow path to the distant Celestial City.

As he makes the journey from “here” to “there,” from The City of Destruction to The Celestial City, Christian must pass through The Wicket-Gate and walk The Wicket Way, the straight, narrow, arduous path that alone leads to his ultimate destination, his true home. On The Wicket Way, he passes through other places; prospective “homes” that entice him to settle down and stay — The Slough of Despond,

The Village of Morality, The Palace Beautiful, The Delectable Mountains, Vanity Fair — but none of them are Christian’s true home. He is warned along The Wicket Way not to lie down and sleep, for that would prove fatal. The Celestial City is his true home, and he must never get comfortable and settle down until he arrives at his final destination. Christian, however, does not make the journey alone; he travels in, and benefits from, the company of guides who help him stay on the path — Faithful and Hopeful.

Though these guides have never actually been to The Celestial City, they have caught sight of it, and it will not stop until they reach, with fellow-pilgrims in tow, what they have come to believe is their true home. The two central ideas of Bunyan’s story should not escape us: (1) that this world is not our home; (2) we can, nonetheless, glimpse our true home from here, which compels and propels Christian on the pilgrimage to his true home.2

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Part of the reason Bunyan’s masterpiece has survived the test of time is that it is an apt description of the Christian’s life, of the dialectical character of the Christian’s relationship with this world, and of the nature of Christian leaders as guides for others who are on “The Wicket Way.” There is a significant difference between seeing Christian leadership focused on their life in this world, or as guiding God’s people to another world. While, to be sure, both are needed, the contemporary balance has shifted to the former, nearly to the exclusion of the latter.

When I was a boy, we used to sing an old Gospel song in church, This World is Not My Home; I’m Just a’Passin’ Through. I have never heard that sung in modern churches, not so much because of its music as its message. Some would say that it is too escapist, too esoteric, too “otherworldly” to be serviceable in today’s church, where the focus often seems to be more on thriving in this world than living as though you belong to another. And yet, when you turn to the Gospels, Bunyan’s theme is central. The Jesus of the Gospels is not just interested in helping people adapt to this world; rather, Jesus comes to call persons to a world He called “the Kingdom of God,” a world so countercultural to this world that its citizens can never feel at home here.3 To be sure, this concept of the Kingdom of God as a countercultural, alternative reality, both in the world but not of it, is challenging for some to grasp.4 Perhaps an illustration will help. Imagine for a moment that the room in which you are reading this is the only room in the whole world, and the people with whom you occupy this room the only people in the world.

There are no windows or doors in your room; hence, you have no concept of anything outside your little “world.” Indeed, the word “outside” does not exist in your language. You would be forgiven in such a situation for believing that your room and the people with whom you occupy it were the entire universe.

However, completely unknown to you, there exists another floor above your room where other people are living other lives and doing other things. You are not aware of their existence because you have never been outside your own little “world,” but they are there, nonetheless. Now, suppose a hole was torn in the ceiling of your “world” (the floor of the “world” above) so that for the first time you were aware of this “other world” just above you. And suppose some in your “world” began to call up to the people in the room above, interacting with them, learning about all sorts of strange and wondrous things,

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things utterly inconceivable in your “world.” Indeed, you discover to your amazement that the people in the room above live their lives according to entirely different “rules” than those which govern life in your “world.” In the room above, the poor are not regarded as a drain on the system, but are precious and prized; the old and the sick are honored and valued rather than warehoused and discarded; in this “world,” if one makes a promise, one keeps it, even when inconvenient or difficult; and in this “world,” it is okay to suffer for doing the right thing. Some in the “world” below find themselves strangely drawn toward this “world” above and its customs and culture.

Indeed, a few are so captured by this new “world” and its new way of living, that even though they still live in the “world” below, they start to think of themselves as really belonging to the “world” above. Though they are still in your “world,” they are no longer of your “world.” The room above has broken through into their “world,” changing them forever.5 This is what Jesus meant when He proclaimed that the Kingdom of God had broken into the world through His life and ministry.6 He was describing an eschatological event, indeed, a world-defining event, so radical and revolutionary that it created a whole new community which He called the church. This new community is made up of people who, having caught sight of it, could never go back to what they once were.

While the eschatological nature of the Kingdom of God as a wholly new world breaking through amid this present, broken, and evil world has many implications, perhaps the most important has to do with the mission of the kingdom community Jesus called and created. Specifically, the kingdom community, called the Church, is not here to “fix” this world; rather, it is here to call-out people to recognize their sojourner status.7 Consequently, the Church does not have a social agenda, rather, it is a social agenda; namely, to invite others into the community so that they too might catch sight of the Kingdom and be captured and claimed by it.8 If this is the Gospel-derived identity of the Church, then this has important implications both for the character of the Church and its leadership. For example, the Church is to be the vanguard of the Kingdom of God rather than the vanguard of the culture. The Church is a countercultural community of persons who have bought into a different story, embraced a different vision, and live a different set of values from that of the dominant culture; that is to say, it is an enclave of one culture living in the midst

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of another. The New Testament is clear: the Church is to be in the world while at the same time not being of the world. When the Church puts too much emphasis on not being of the world, the Church runs the risk of being so heavenly minded that it is no earthly good.

On the other hand, when the Church puts too much emphasis on being in the world, the Church becomes merely one more service organization baptizing the world’s ways of saving.

But Christians, here and now, are in the world and as such have an obligation to be Christian in the world.

Jesus speaks to this in His Parable of the Sheep and Goats (Matthew 25:31ff.). It is the only place recorded in the New Testament where Jesus addresses the Last Judgment as a subject. And the criteria? “I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you welcomed me; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick or in prison and you visited me. When did we see you hungry and thirsty and naked and sick and in prison and we did/did not tend to your needs? Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.” Nowhere is the Christian’s engagement with the broken, hurting, and suffering in this world clearer and more compelling.

The Christian’s presence in this world has a salutary influence and effect on this world. This is what Jesus meant when He described the disciples’ role in the world with the tensive images of salt and light and leaven. Note that the one thing these images all have in common is their intrusive character; that is, though a subset of the whole (or in human terms, an enclave of one culture in the midst of another), they nonetheless permeate and influence the whole. But what catches my attention in Jesus’ Parable of the Sheep and Goats is the fact that both the redeemed and the damned in the parable do not know that they are either redeemed or damned. “When did we see you hungry and thirsty and naked and sick and in prison and we did/did not tend to your needs?” The implication is that “If we had known it was you, we might have responded differently.” The point? Being redeemed or damned is not so much something you do as it is something you are. It is existential, not merely operational. Both the redeemed and the damned were just being who they were. Being Christian is a matter of one’s existence, not merely one’s behavior. Take in a stray cat and care for it — bathe it, de-flea it, feed it, give it a warm place to sleep, give it a name, call it “Fred” — and after a while, you may forget that Fred is a cat. But put a mouse in front of Fred and you will find out what a cat is every time. In the same way, put a hurting person in front of a Christian, and you will find out what a Christian is, or is not, every time.

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Concerning leadership in the church, this kingdom view of the Church means that leadership is neither purely operational nor functional; it is visionary, corporate, and transformational.9 Leadership in the church is finally a matter of vision — someone has caught sight of another world that will not let them go and they lead others in the economy of this world.

That is, leaders are kingdom guides, guiding the Christian, in the community of Christians on “The Wicket Way.” The challenge of Christian leadership in a secular world, then, is threefold: (1) to cast a vision of that “other world” so compelling and clear that others are drawn to it; (2) to keep the community focused on that vision rather than being sidetracked down peripheral paths — to keep “the main thing” the main thing; (3) to be ever mindful that the leader is guiding the Christian to a place that he/she has caught sight of but never actually arrived at themselves. This means that the leader must keep their eyes far down the path and on the horizon lit with the gleaming light of the city to come. While it is expected and even desirable for folk to feel that what they happen to be doing in church at a particular moment is the most important thing the church is doing, leaders must keep the big picture in view, that we are a Gospel-formed community calling and forming persons to be citizens of the Kingdom of God. If leaders do not do this, the church runs the risk of degenerating into a special interest group rather than the church. Leaders must be humble, always remembering that they are fellow travelers on “The Wicket Way,” not its gatekeepers.

Kingdom leadership, therefore, is not so much behavioral modification as it is existential transformation. It is, as Bunyan rightly points out, more a matter of vision, calling, and pilgrimage than management, governance, and profession. It is an “inside out” affair, not an “outside in” affair. Jesus often had this debate with the Pharisees who wanted to reduce the Kingdom of God to right conduct — “Do right, and you’ll be right.” But Jesus, knowing that you can do all the right things for all the wrong reasons, turned this on its head by pointing to the primacy of motive. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Don’t murder,’ but I say unto you, ‘Don’t hate.’” The murder that happens with the hands has its roots in the heart. And so, Jesus said, “Be right, and you’ll do right.”

It is not merely a matter of changing one’s conduct; it is changing one’s very existence and citizenship. Whether or not church leadership, then, is kingdom leadership, and not merely organizational management, depends on the frequency to which one’s leadership is tuned. It is not so much whether the Christian is to be in the world or

out of the world (that is a false dichotomy; we’re in the world), but where a Christian’s true home lies.

The Pilgrim’s Progress has now been digitized by Project Gutenberg and available to readers online at https://www.gutenberg.org.

1

See Philip H. Pfatteicher, “Walking home together: John Bunyan and the Pilgrim Church,” Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology, vol. 25, no. 1, 2016, 90ff., who writes: “We are to learn, as the Bible teaches, that this world is not our home and we must not get too comfortable in it. We, like our spiritual ancestors the ancient Hebrews, are on a prolonged journey, through difficult days and years on our way to a place which we have never seen but which we know is our home, our true native land…”

2

“Modern scholarship is quite unanimous in the opinion that the kingdom of God was the central message of Jesus,” George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1993), p. 54. For the definitive summary of both Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of God and the scholarly literature on the subject, see George R. Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986), passim.

3

For a fuller treatment of this theme, see Robert Wayne Stacy, “Following Jesus in the Kingdom of God: Leadership in the Synoptic Gospels,” in Biblical Leadership: Theology for the Everyday Leader, ed. by Benjamin K. Forrest and Chet Roden (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2017), pp. 316-333.

4

This illustration was previously published in R. Wayne Stacy, “Introduction to the Thessalonian Correspondences,” Review & Expositor vol. 96, No 2 (Spring 1999), 175-194.

5

Indeed, Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God is the narrative context of the Synoptic Gospels. That is because the key idea at the core of the first-century Jewish worldview (of which the New Testament was a product) was a fundamental eschatological dualism referred to as the doctrine of the Two Ages: the belief that the world as it is (the “Present Evil Age”) is given over to the dominion of Satan who has usurped God’s rightful sovereignty over God’s creation, but that the “Age to Come,” which is just over the horizon, is the world of the kingdom of God in which God’s legitimate sovereignty (i.e., God’s “kingdom”) will be finally and fully reestablished over all the world bringing with it redemption, peace, and justice.

6

For a fuller treatment of this theme, see Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989), passim; see esp. pp. 86ff.

7

8

Resident Aliens, pp. 43ff.

Most discussions of leadership today focus either on the ontology of leadership (analysis of the qualities, skills, or traits required of a leader) or the methodology of leadership (analysis of the program, agenda, or strategy involved in leadership), with little, if any, attention paid to the teleology (eschatology) of leadership (the goal or end toward which the leader leads). Yet, in the biblical perspective, leadership is almost entirely a matter of teleology (eschatology), with little, if any, interest in the ontology and methodology of leadership. See Michale Ayers, “Toward a Theology of Leadership,” in Journal of Biblical Perspectives in Leadership, vol 1. no. 1 (Fall 2006), pp. 3-27.

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Guest Contribution

W. Brian Shelton Department Chair and Professor of Theology, Asbury University, Co-Author of “The Scared Leader: Understanding and Overcoming Fear in Leadership”

FEAR IN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP: THE TELOS AND ANTI-TELOS OF TRAINING CHAMPIONS Christian leaders share a mission. We lead as service to Christ, His Kingdom, and the Church. We lead as service to believers and unbelievers, promoting Gospel essence to both rather than promoting ourselves through leadership. When all else about us seems to fail, we look to Christ and His mission, whereby our leadership gets recalibrated and finds redemption.

This redemption is essential because of a competitive mission that has, since the Fall, beckoned leaders to turn from their created purpose.

Christian leaders operate within a paradox of the fallen and redeemed world. Our leadership can be warped, misguided, or sinful. Original sin explains why we are not always good leaders. In our theology, our ancestor Adam was momentarily a poor leader and his sin perpetuates to us as a consequence (Romans 5). We thus tend to see our own leadership as championing when really it can be temperamental, oppressive, and misleading. We call it victorious when it achieves its goals, yet we minimize our demoralizing effects on followers. Among the many fallen qualities that a sinful leader might bear is fear; we are like an anxious tree bearing anxious fruit. Daniel Doriani describes the impact: “It is one thing to feel fear for a moment if a snake slithers over our feet. It is another to be disposed to fear, always primed to fear snakes, poverty, loneliness, cancer, and terrorist attacks.”1 Fear is among the most hidden qualities in leadership. After all, leaders are nothing if they are not strong. They are expected to demure on their weaknesses, show humility in their style, and recognize their reliance on others. However, for leaders to speak honestly about their personal insecurities, impending threats, and genuine fears could result in negative effects. It is difficult to say, “Follow me,” while also saying, “I fear our future failure.” Such honest divulgence would not elicit an enthusiastic response from followers.2

This article briefly explores fear in leadership. It recognizes a fearful fallen condition and a healthy quality of fear. Like any other emotion or thought, fear has both a positive and a negative dimension. Fear rightly handled can make a leader a champion, capable of training other champions. Fear wrongly handled can make a leader a narcissist, a controller, a zealot, or even a coward. Sinful leaders can find support in cultural voices, from the values of a secular age to the fanfare of other Christian leaders. Yet, we can be better leaders because we have known, experienced, and been transformed by the Gospel. Fear provides an insight into the why of our leadership and the making of leaders — why we have a dark side and why we have hope for a bright side.

Fear from the Fall Our predilection towards fearful leadership finds explanation in Genesis 3, as has been already suggested.3 In Genesis 1, the sounds of goodness resonate at the end of each day. The creation narrative climaxes on day 6, as people are made in God’s image (1:26-27). Here, “God saw all that He had made, and it was very good” (1:31). This includes placing Adam in the garden to work (2:15). The creation mandate, “Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth” (1:28) illustrates our expansive leadership within creation.

Adam names the animals (2:20), while Adam and Eve could eat from almost any tree in the Garden (2:16).

These images demonstrate their status as the leaders and caretakers of this new world. With disobedience in Eden, God and Adam no longer walked together in the Garden. When God called Adam, he hid (3:8).

Eventually the man admits, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself ” (3:10).

Fear has entered into the human condition. It emerged as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s disobedience.

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It emerged along with knowing firsthand the evil, the bad, and the dangerous that comes when we must be stewards of our creation and leaders in our workplaces. It emerged along with sin. It is, on one hand, an unnatural quality to our lives, alien to the way God made us. It is, on the other hand, a now natural quality to our lives, stuck with us in our fallen condition. Brokenness becomes the new normal after Eden. Anxiety becomes a familiar friend. Yet, there is nothing normal about dysfunctional leadership, especially when our fears hurt other people.

The manifestation of fear can take on a range of leadership behaviors. The most common initial response is one of anxiety, worry, or what we might kindly call “concern” in order not to see our responses as they truly are. Responses to fear in leadership then fall into two categories: (1) an active sphere of behavior or (2) a passive sphere of behavior. Generally speaking, active responses to fear confront a decision, a conflict, or a vision by attacking them. Overreaction vents fear into emotional expressions like anger and frustration. Blame shifts the responsibility for fear to another person or cause. Control redirects fear into micromanagement and pettiness. Arrogance buffers fear with the ego. Passive responses motivate a leader in the moment to withdraw from the fear. Denial mitigates fear by preventing reality from taking hold.

Victimization demands empathy to protect from the fear. Avoidance postpones the reality of fear and the action to resolve it. People pleasing seeks to dilute fear by gaining approval of others, and isolation lets fear drive a leader into hiding.4 Psychologist Marcus Kilian identifies the various ways that some maladapted leadership personalities process threats: The fear of a person with narcissistic personality is being dependent (or the loss of power) whereas the fear of its opposite personality style, the dependent personality, is the fear of independence (or assuming power). The fear of a person with an obsessive-compulsive personality style is change, whereas the fear of its opposite personality, histrionic [melodramatic], is routine or limitedness.5 The results are sad, multifarious expressions of fear in leadership. Yet, there is indeed hope that we can lead Christianly and confidently, to find restoration in this condition which plagues every leader. However, this is not possible until we realize how culture also fades into sin, in turn providing voices that shape the fear in our leadership.

Fear from Culture While we look to biblical texts and Christian writings to shape our understanding of leadership, we realize even more how a competing epistemology also forms our views. Cultural influences shape our justification for fear-based leadership. We call a nonreligious worldview “secular,” and its competition for our minds and hearts is recognizable. We often use the term to contrast a view that is Christian, as a paradigm that does not draw from a Christian worldview. This does not necessarily make its hypotheses wrong, but its lack of any faith element at times weakens its potential.

Philosophies emerge which can either abuse or can proffer abuse, like leadership values in Machiavelli, “It is far safer to be feared than loved,”6 and Nietzsche “Wherever I found the living, there I found there the will to power; and even in the will of the servant I found the will to be master.”7 Few leaders willingly admit fear or embrace domination, but too many leaders operate from fear, displaying the same careless qualities. The culture of society, the organization, our employees, and our students can motivate us to respond and govern from fear of being an unpopular or unsuccessful leader. Both the Christian and secular spheres of the leadership book genre are too quick to focus on how to be an effective leader from their perspective worldviews, without recognizing this underlying why.

Fear Made Whole Yet, fear is not entirely a bad thing, and it may be a beginning for recovery. We are told in Proverbs that “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” (1:7; 9:10), which reminds us that knowledge of the Holy One leads to an awe of God, which puts us on track to think well. His statutes are worthy and they become our statutes as redeemed believers. We are humbled because He is so much greater (Isaiah 55:9), we are careful because we know judgment of our words awaits us (Matthew 12:36), and we are loving because He has given us His love to share with others (John 15:2). This recognition recalibrates us along Gospel sentiments to restore our fallen leadership.

Christians on mission rightly bear statements like that of Liberty University, “Training Champions for Christ.” As people, we welcome ideals, but we must recognize how we carry this fallen condition quality with it. Our leadership has an opportunity to see our personal and organizational mission gain a remission from the effects of sin. This is not a demission — a dismissing of the problem — but an admission of sin

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and a welcome to the work of Christ in our leadership.

As redeemed believers, we have the potential for something greater — not just greater than sin offers, but something as good as Adam and better than Adam. We have an ability to do great things in a new power, as that commemorated at Pentecost from Jesus, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” (Acts 1:8). As redeemed stewards of culture and creation, we can now craft and pursue ideals that are kingdom-centered, follower-centered, and student-centered. Brené Brown remarks: “We desperately need more leaders who are committed to courageous, wholehearted leadership and who are selfaware enough to lead from their hearts, rather than unevolved leaders who lead from hurt and fear.”8

Both the Christian and secular spheres of the leadership book genre are too quick to focus on how to be an effective leader from their perspective worldviews, without recognizing this underlying why.

Luther puts fear into perspective for us by recognizing that leaders suffer as part of their calling. Christ’s suffering for us means that we must suffer for Him. This means working on our own leadership fears.

Christ’s victory is bestowed on us. “And if you can believe this, then in time of great fear and trouble you will be able to say: Even though I suffer long, very well then, what is that compared with that great treasure which my God has given to me, that I shall live eternally with Him?”9 Here, the great reformer echoes John’s reminder, “Perfect loves casts out fear” (1 John 4:18), and Paul’s reminder, “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7).

As Christian university faculty and administrative leaders, we can “bring about genuine Christian formation in the way we train students in their academic disciplines,”10 recognizing our fears and our potential for Christian confidence. Steps sometime help us to order these activities. First, we recognize how leaders fails. We identify how yielding to fear demoralizes others but putting aside fear might require deemphasizing ourselves. We identify with self-respect as image bearers, but we disrespect others in the image: students, reportees, and supervisors.

We confront these personal challenges with prayer, reading, and resources like performance evaluations.

Second, we focus our efforts on those whom we lead.

In the classroom, we might refrain from dismissing

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a competitive worldview question because we realize that a Christian university should be safe places for seekers to inquire, test, and process biblical and unbiblical ideas. In the team meeting, we might listen longer, bridle impatience, delegate freely, and weigh application with jurisprudence. Third, we align these initiatives in the disciple-making process to continue to press for achievement, to meet objectives, and to lead individuals to contribute. We then realize that we are championing others by releasing control in the face of fear.

their fallenness and their fears, graciously enabling them to replicate others-centered-champions through confession, education, mentoring, and discipleship.

A Christian education factors in these qualities, and it makes champions of its teachers and leaders before making champions of its students and followers.

Daniel M. Doriani, “Exploring and Discipling Our Emotions,” Presbyterion 44 (2019), 45.

1

W. Brian Shelton and Kent E. Rothwell, The Scared Leader: Understanding and Overcoming Fear in Leadership (forthcoming). This paragraph and other material in this article is used with permission.

2

In all of these, we keep an eye on our fears. Fears can surface at any of the complex links in the chain of our leadership. We face the reality about the causes of our fears while we seek to overcome them. In many senses, a leader is an overcomer, a victor. He or she does not overcome alone, solving problems or advancing mission, but should stay intricately and personally aware of the culturally competitive voices that whisper, “You don’t need that verse, that commandment of God. It doesn’t apply to you. Not in this case.”

We keep an eye on our fears not merely to be successful leaders, but to make our followers into champions.

Our ability to articulate a Christian telos requires a recognition, confrontation, and change in the process of making champions. In a fallen world, broken teachers create even more broken students. In a world being redeemed, champions-for-the-other recognize

See this issue’s editorial, Jack Carson, “Champion for the Other,” Faith and the Academy 5, no. 1 (Fall 2020).

3

The observations of this paragraph will find elaboration in, W. Brian Shelton and Kent E. Rothwell, The Scared Leader: Understanding and Overcoming Fear in Leadership (forthcoming).

4

Marcus K. Kilian, Formational Leadership: Developing Spiritual and Emotional Maturity in Toxic Leaders (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2018), 33.

5

6

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince 17 (New York: Dover, 1992), 43.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 34 (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics), 100.

7

Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Hearts (New York: Random House, 2019), 4.

8

Martin Luther, “On Cross and Suffering,” in Faith and Freedom: An Invitation to the Writings of Martin Luther, edited by John F. Thornton and Susan B. Varenne (New York: Vintage, 2002), 144.

9

10

Carson, “Champion for the Other”.

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Guest Contribution

Bill High CEO of The Signatry: A Global Christian Foundation

MEASURING SUCCESS BY YOUR SUCCESSORS Leading is simply defined as “[going] before or with to show the way.”1 Of course, the unspoken element of the definition: people. In order to lead, someone must follow you.

What is the mark of great leadership? When Solomon’s son Rehoboam took over the kingdom of Israel, the people came and asked him to relieve their workload.

Solomon’s wise advisers told Rehoboam, “If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.”2 Rehoboam, however, scorned their advice. Instead of serving his people, he exerted his power. As a result, the ten tribes rebelled, and the kingdom was split in two.

All leaders have the same choice. They can either exert their power or choose to serve. If they serve, they will gain people’s loyalty and service for life. But how does one truly serve?

Champion leaders know their true success lies in their successors. They are not building a kingdom; they are building a dynasty. They plan for the future while creating the present. In order to create successors, champion leaders must do three things: 1) call out the best in others, 2) release control to let others succeed, and 3) prepare for a future they will never see.

Call Out the Best in Others Many people, whether through past baggage or limited vision, either do not know or have stopped believing in God’s potential for their lives. They have put up limits on what they might become, and they desperately need someone to call out their potential and believe in their God-given design.

Terra was one of those people. She was one of the first volunteers in our organization, and she was the living picture of enthusiasm. Her voice rose to high pitches of excitement, and she loved ministry. When she joined us, I asked her why she was a volunteer and

not a full-time worker. She explained that, despite her college degree, she didn’t think she was qualified to work in a ministry. Not long after, Terra told me that she was leaving for Indiana because her husband had been transferred to a new job.

Six or seven years passed until one day I received a phone call out of the blue from Terra. Remarkably, she told me that she was nearing the end of her master’s degree program in nonprofit management. She told me that when she started the master’s degree, students had to sit in a circle and tell why they were in the program. When it came Terra’s turn, she shared that when she was volunteering for our organization, she’d been told by me she could be so much more than a volunteer; she could be a leader. I don’t remember having that conversation with Terra. But she did. She remembered being called out. She remembered that someone believed in her.

On the other hand, sometimes bringing out the best in others means admitting they are not the best fit for your organization. If a job lies outside of their giftings, personality, or skill set, the best thing to do is encourage them to find a different role that is a better fit.

I have to be honest. There is nothing like having to sit down with an employee and encourage them to leave; it is an incredibly hard thing to do. But at the end of the day, sometimes the decision needs to be made and the conversation needs to take place. Champion leadership means leading others to a place where they will thrive.

Release Control to Let Others Succeed My friend Gary, a manager at a local company, is an admitted control freak and can be a bit gruff at times.

However, he wants to see his company grow and achieve new heights. Even though it was a difficult move, he took himself out of the primary sales role and put three people in his place. He trained them, watched them bumble along, and resisted the urge

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to take back the reins when he saw them fail. Today, Gary would tell you that those three salespeople have exceeded his highest years. He got three times the value by letting go of control and letting others succeed.

Conversely, I’ve seen organizations destroyed by a leader’s inability to release control. Early in my ministry foundation career, I began working with an organization in the midst of leadership change. Like many start up organizations, the founding leader was bright, aggressive and entrepreneurial. His drive made him successful, and he was the perfect person to launch the company.

However, as the company grew past the startup phase, the founding leader began hurting the organization.

He was still coming up with new ideas, and he was trying to innovate. This drive — the same drive that had made him successful — was taking them off their mission. He was disruptive to the staff, and his abrupt leadership style created high employee turnover.

The board recognized that a different kind of leader was needed — one with stronger administrative and management skills. When the board began to implement a graceful transition plan, the leader reacted. He was defensive and refused to give up control. It grew worse, and threats of lawsuits and

arbitration were soon on the table. It was a bitter, guarded mess. Eventually, the lawsuits and pending claims were all resolved, but the ongoing battle stretched over a few years. By that time, donor confidence was destroyed, and the organization eventually closed its doors.

Letting go is perhaps one of the most critical issues facing Christian leaders today. Our fear and our pride keep us from letting others have control. However, we are at a unique cultural moment; many Christian organizations are led by baby boomers who are getting ready to retire. The turnover in leadership is inevitable.

Christian leaders need to learn how to let go of control and encourage younger generations to rise up into leadership.

Jesus exemplified the art of releasing control when He prepared His followers for His own departure.

He recognized that if He let go, even greater things would happen. Before His death and resurrection, He told His followers, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these.”3 He realized that by holding on He could actually hold back the growth of the Church. Jesus recognized it plainly: “But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to

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you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.”4 Jesus led by empowering His disciples to follow in His footsteps.

He set them up for victory and taught them to do the same for their future successors.

Plan for a Future You’ll Never See This past season, the Kansas City Chiefs won Super Bowl LIV, and many credit their coach, Andy Reid, as one of the greatest coaches in NFL history.5 Why? Because of his impressive coaching tree. His successors’ victories are plentiful. Ten of Reid’s assistants have become head coaches. Of them, seven led their teams to the playoffs, three made it to the Super Bowl, and two of those coaches won a Super Bowl. All of that before Reid had ever won his own Super Bowl.6 Andy Reid let his employees learn from him, leave him, beat him, and receive the glory. While Reid eventually won his own Super Bowl, he knew that his true success lay in his successors. He showed champion leadership as he developed successors who would move on and lead their own teams to victory. Champion leaders keep the long view in mind. They set up successful systems that allow successors to thrive.

Preparing a legacy is like planting a shade tree whose stately branches sprawl far over the lawn. Each tree takes years to grow large enough to cast shade. It starts as a sapling. The one who plants it must buy it, plant it, water, fertilize, and protect it from wildlife until it is big enough to stand on its own. The gardener who tends it will likely never reap the full benefits, but generations after him will find relief under the tree’s shade. Those who lead with the goal of blessing others through their legacy will inevitably create the greatest good in this broken world. This is what it means to be a champion leader: seek the best in others, let go of control, and set others up for a victory that lasts beyond their lifetime.

1

Dictionary.com https://www.dictionary.com/browse/lead?s=t

2

1 Kings 12:7 ESV

3

John 14:12

4

John 16:7

Ian O’Connor, “Andy Reid's Super Bowl LIV win is the capper on a Hall of Fame career for Chiefs coach,” ESPN, Feb. 2, 2020, https:// www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/28621830/andy-reid-super-bowl-liv-wincapper-hall-fame-career-chiefs-coach 5

Albert Breer, “Why the Andy Reid Coaching Tree Has Been So Successful,” Sports Illustrated, Nov. 15, 2018, https://www.si.com/ nfl/2018/11/15/andy-reid-coaching-tree-doug-pederson-seanmcdermott-ron-rivera-matt-nagy-steve-spagnuolo-john-harbaugh 6

Guest Contribution

47 Mike DeVito1 Former Defensive Tackle, NY Jets 2007-12 KC Chiefs 2013-15

A LIVING EPISTLE: CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP AS LEADING BY EXAMPLE The many parallels between sports, specifically football, and the Christian life fascinate me — the striving for an ultimate goal and the sacrifice that comes along with such a pursuit; the focus and attention to detail necessary in order to maximize the short amount of time allotted to attaining said goal; the importance of the team and doing life together, and so on. In fact, the Apostle Paul highlights a number of these commonalities in his letter to the Corinthians: Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

(1 Corinthians 9:24-27, ESV) In this article, I want to focus on the parallel Paul makes in the last verse of this text. As I’m am sure you have noticed by now, this issue is devoted to Christian leadership — specifically, what Christian leadership looks like (or should look like) in a secular culture.

Having played football for nearly two-decades, I have witnessed firsthand a number of different leadership models. I want to highlight the type of leadership I tried to embody on the football field — one that Paul alludes to in the passage above: leadership by example.

During my time in the NFL, I had the honor of taking the field with (and playing against) a number of the greatest players the game. Interestingly, however, I quickly noticed that one’s success on the gridiron was not what determined whether or not the rest of the team was going to look up to, and follow, a given player. Honestly, I am not even sure it played into the equation of leadership qualifications.

I had one teammate who was an absolute animal on the field — completely unstoppable. This player had

the ability to throw grown men with one hand and tackle any running back that came within his vicinity.

This player was so naturally skilled that he did not need to work very hard to perform well on Sundays; so he would regularly skip meetings, miss workouts, weigh-in overweight, argue with the coaches, and miss practice. The rest of the team took notice, and whenever this player tried to lead the team (fire us up before a game, break us down after practice, address us when things weren’t going well, etc.), guys would just laugh. No one took his attempt at leadership seriously.

This is just one salient example of how performance does not always equate to respect (a necessary, and possibly sufficient, condition of leadership).

On the other hand, I also played with a number of average players who were considered by many to be leaders in the locker room because of the example they set. I tried to be one of these types of players. To say that I was an average NFL player is to be kind. More honestly, I was a bit below average. However, I was able to make up for this talent deficit by bringing a number of intangible qualities to the table.

I took pride in being the first player in the building and one of the last players to leave. I took pride in going out to practice 45 minutes early to get in extra work. I took pride in studying the game and conveying the wisdom I had attained to my teammates. I was not going to make the Pro Bowl, but I was going to make sure that if you followed my example, you were going to be the best player you could be. I led by example — and the example I worked to display granted me a significant voice in the locker room.

This model of leadership was especially effective when it came to younger players on the team. When an established veteran acted a certain way, practiced a certain way, and worked a certain way, the younger players would generally follow suit — so that is exactly what I did. Rookies are told by their agents, coaches,

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and other players early and often to, as soon as they enter an NFL facility, figure out who the established veterans are and do what they do. It was a lesson that proved vital for my own success, and something I took serious responsibility for as an older player.

To be a great leader you have to live it! People will be much less apt to live out what you are preaching if you are not living it out yourself. In turn, if we are to understand leadership as “influence, the ability of one person to influence others to follow his or her lead,” then living a Christlike life is a perquisite to being a good Christian leader, regardless of what one might profess.

In the verse above, Paul recognized that his preaching would fall on deaf ears if he himself was not walking the walk. Paul stresses this point more than once. In his letter to Timothy, he writes: “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12, ESV) More explicitly, Paul outright commands the Church to “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1, ESV. See also Philippians 3:17).

Time and again, Paul impressed upon the Church the importance of leadership by example; he recognized the power of a righteous witness.

It is worth noting that the leadership Paul is referring to here is not generic, but rather, directional. Paul is not commanding the Church to influence others simply for the sake of influence. As with sports, there is a goal in sight that inspires and motivates one to set a good example. For NFL teams, that goal is victory in the Super Bowl. This is the telos (ultimate aim) of football. For the Church, our mission is the Great Commission. Our lives are oriented around the mission of the Gospel, and by necessity, Christian leadership centers on the Gospel as its telos.

Within a secular culture, especially a secular culture like that of our 21st century western democracy, it is inevitable that there will be opposition to the Christian faith. Obviously, as Christians, we are not surprised by this reality (at least we should not be).

The Scriptures remind us often that this world is not our home. However, regardless of how people may perceive us, or act towards us initially, the power of a godly witness is contagious to those both inside and outside the body of Christ.

J. Oswald Sanders captures this idea well in his classic work Spiritual Leadership: Outsiders will criticize; nonetheless, they respect the high ideals of Christian character. When a Christian leader full of high ideals lives a holy and joyful life in front of unbelievers, they will want to cultivate a similar experience. The character of the elder should command the respect of the unbeliever, inspire his confidence, and arouse his aspiration. Example is much more potent than precept.3 Here, Sanders is following the line of reasoning laid out by Jonathan Edwards, who explains: “There are two ways of representing and recommending true religion and virtue to the world; the one, by doctrine and precept; the other, by instance and example; both are abundantly used in the Holy Scriptures.”4 For Sanders, the latter is greater than the former.

The key to leading by example, according to Paul, is to be disciplined. To be undisciplined is to fall into sin, falling into sin leads to setting a bad example, and setting a bad example can hurt one’s witness to the world. Thus, Paul intentionally disciplined himself, making sure that his actions aligned with his message so that his words in conjunction with his actions displayed Christ to the world.

As one may imagine, being disciplined is vitally important when it comes to being successful on the football field. Football is a truly unique sport. Unlike most other sports, football seasons are relatively short.

In the NFL, a season is only 16 games in length (compared to NBA with 82 games or the MLB with 162 games). Broken down even further, within a given game, the average NFL player will play around 30 plays.

Each play lasts around 3 to 5 seconds. Thus, over the course of an NFL season, the average player will only play around 24 to 40 minutes of actual football.

NFL players recognize this fact and, in order to maximize this short amount of time, they train, study and prepare the other 349 days of the year. This is not hyperbole. If you were to ask an NFL player about their schedule, I can guarantee you most of them would have the days, weeks and months accounted for. They discipline themselves in this way because they recognize the time allotted to be successful on the field is very short.

In the same way, life is short, and our time to make an impact for the Kingdom is even shorter. In light of this fact, Paul commands us to “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making

FA I T H A N D T H E A C A D E M Y: E N G A G I N G T H E C U LT U R E W I T H G R A C E A N D T R U T H

the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16, ESV). Similar to football, we need to discipline ourselves in order to maximize the time we have been given. We should do this for a number of important reasons, not the least of which is to ensure that the example we are displaying to the world is one of Christian values and virtues. Again, as Paul recognized, it is our words in conjunction with our actions that lead to a powerful Christian witness. The former without the latter is impotent. Therefore, we must discipline ourselves to ensure the latter and, in turn, be an effective witness to a secular world.

In short, a key aspect of Christian leadership in a secular world is leading by example. As Christians, we should strive to live our lives in such a way that those in our secular culture say, “There is something different about these Christian men and women.” We should

strive to display a witness that is so powerful that our secular world will have no option but to take notice, and in response look for the God whom we serve.

Mike DeVito played for the New York Jets for six years and the Kansas City Chiefs for 3 years after graduating from the University of Maine. After retiring from football he started pursuing a new career track: academic theology. He has an MA in Christian Apologetics from Houston Baptist University, and M.Sc. in Philosophical, Science and Religion from the University of Edinburgh, and is pursuing a PhD in philosophy at the University of Birmingham.

1

J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence for Every Believer. (Chicago, IL: Moody Press) 27.

2

3

Sanders, 41.

Brainerd, David; Edwards, Jonathan. The Life and Diary of David Brainerd with Notes and Reflections by Jonathan Edwards (Illustrated) (pp. 1-2). Unknown. Kindle Edition.

4

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Faculty Contribution

Dickson Ngama1 Teaching Fellow, John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University

DANIEL IN A SECULAR AGE Definitions of a Secular Age

Daniel in the Babylonian Age

According to Charles Taylor, in the medieval age and before, belief in God, gods, and spirits was the default position of the world. In the secular age, by contrast, belief in the supernatural is just one option among many. Views on this secularization leads some to hope for the eventual demise of all religion and its corresponding constraints. Others fear the fruits of such a world. These two poles of religious conviction are readily evident, and this is where Taylor comes in to provide language for understanding our secular age. For Taylor, secularity is not the end of religious belief, but the explosion of different ways of believing.

Christendom’s central location of influence is gone.

However, Christianity remains as a religious option among others. Christianity in this secular age is now fractured into many forms of believing. Christians need to realize that in this world every belief, religious or not, is contested and no belief is dominant.2 All of this depends on the definitions and understanding of the term “secular.” Trevin Wax helpfully gives us a key to Taylor’s usage by explaining secular as (a) that which is opposed to the sacred; (b) secularism as “non-religious neutrality”; and (c) secularity as an “age when belief is one option among many.”3 While there are those who would exclude religion from a secular society, this is not a necessary part of secularity.4

Daniel lived in a pre-modern era when kings ruled supreme. In Daniel’s time, every people group had its gods, priests, sacred places, rituals, and ceremonies.

A conquered people were expected to submit to the power of their new king and to the worship of his gods. In the book of Daniel (ch. 1), Nebuchadnezzar exercises power by changing the names of his captives, ordering their diet, and requiring their reeducation.

All this is for the purpose of transforming them into loyal Babylonian servants. There was no understanding that minority groups were entitled to their own selfidentity, culinary tastes, or education — cultural diversity was perceived as a vice.

While secularity claims to be neutral and universal, it exercises illegitimate power over religious people through defining religion as “private, individual, and largely irrational, or at least non-rational.”5 The secular world is therefore not as benign as some people would have us believe. It has its ideological wars of domination no less intense than those of an enchanted world. The book of Daniel can help us reflect on living in a secular age; Daniel and his fellow Jews managed to survive, thrive, and serve in a world hostile to their religious beliefs. From Daniel we hope to derive lessons on how our students can live in a secular and sometimes hostile environment.

King Nebuchadnezzar, as powerful as he was, discovered that he was not in control of everything.

He could not interpret his own dream. The God of Daniel showed him the future of empires and Daniel interpreted the dream for him. The king confessed that Daniel’s God was sovereign over all other gods and kings because only He could reveal mysteries. The king also promoted Daniel and his fellow Jews to the highest political offices in Babylon (ch. 2).

Minority groups in Babylon may continue to pray to their gods, but they must honor and worship whatever idol the king set up. King Nebuchadnezzar was a despot, and he expected instant compliance or instant execution. You were either to bow or to burn.

The Jews refused to bow and therefore were cast into to the furnace of fire. Again, the God of the Jews demonstrated His power. Nebuchadnezzar was so impressed that he blessed the God of the Jews and declared that everyone in his kingdom must honor the God of the Jews or else be torn apart and his house destroyed (ch. 3).

One would think Nebuchadnezzar had learned some humility in these encounters with the God of the Jews.

God even warned him in a dream of the consequences of his pride. However, Nebuchadnezzar’s pride

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continued. Divine discipline deprived him of his sanity for seven years. In those years, he roamed the fields like an animal, until he recognized the sovereignty of the God of heaven. Then his sanity was granted back to him and he was restored to his kingdom. Once again, he praised the greatness of the God of the Jews (ch. 4).

But this humility did not extend to his descendant, King Belshazzar, who ordered that the vessels of the Jerusalem Temple be used to serve wine in his banquet.

This was an act of desecration and an affront to the God of Israel. The king was praising gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone when a hand appeared writing on the wall. Once again, Daniel was called in to interpret the mystery. The writing declared the end of the Babylonian Empire. The Medes and the Persians took Babylon and executed Belshazzar that same night. Darius the Mede was the new king of Babylon (ch. 5).

Daniel was again promoted in Babylon and served faithfully under King Darius, so much so that fellow officials became jealous of him and sought to discredit and destroy him. Darius the king was persuaded to issue a decree that nobody may pray to any god but himself for thirty days. When Daniel defied that order and continued to pray to his God, the king had no choice but to have him thrown into a den of lions.

God protected him, and the officials were thrown into the den of lions with their families. It did not go so well for them. King Darius issued another decree requiring all the people in his kingdom to fear and honor the God of Daniel (ch. 6).

Daniel for a Secular Age The Jews experienced hostility in the kingdom of the gentiles, yet they were steadfast in their faith in, witness toward, and worship of God. They knew where true and ultimate power was to be found and they told their detractors and persecutors as much. Their God had rescued them, and they thanked and praised Him. Even a despotic king like Nebuchadnezzar and an unwary king like Darius experienced powerful divine interventions and became promoters of the faith of Israel. Daniel was a prayerful and faithful Jew who experienced visions concerning the future of world empires with respect to the kingdom of God and the destiny of his people. Three applications from Daniel can help faculty in our training of students for their lives in a secular age.

First, students will experience the allures and the hostilities of a secular age since all worldviews in this age are given equal voice. Thus, they must be prepared for standing apart from the streams that are moving around them. This has particular implication for the morality of a secular age where vices and virtues are sometimes valued equally at the table of opportunities and ideas. This context is a tempting location for compromise. Yet, like Daniel and his fellow Jews, students must draw a line and let the world know that in a secular age morality is not a democratized reality.

Biblical standards are not simply an option in a long line of what the culture views as acceptable choices.

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Second, the secular age offers our students opportunities to be good examples of what it means to be a citizen in a pluralistic and diverse environment.

Even though Christianity is taken to be just one more option, our students can demonstrate, individually and in community, in dialogue and in liturgy, that they have something special to offer to those who experience spiritual hunger and thirst in the arid environment of a disenchanted world. Because God has given them faith, love, and hope, they can demonstrate great patience, humility, and diligence in difficult and confused situations. Like Daniel and his fellow Jews in a pagan environment, students can work for the good of their cities and countries, knowing that God has a purpose for them (Jeremiah 29:7). Every Christian and Christian community should be a light in an age that considers itself enlightened yet remains a dark world.

With these in mind, let us teach our students of Daniel’s faithfulness in his age, recognizing that throughout the book of Daniel we see the same existential struggle Paul talks about in Ephesians 6:12 where our battle is truly located among the “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Daniel reminds us where true power is located. Time and again we see ambassadors of evil exercising their power over Daniel and his friends. But, in each chapter, we are then reminded that ultimate power comes from the Lord God.6 In spite of the kings of the earth and their so called power, the Lord God resounds from heaven that His power is greater and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matthew 16:17-19).

And lastly, in this secular world, hostility toward religion remains. People of faith must be prepared for both overt and covert hostility. Evangelical Christians especially, in their unwavering trust in and worship of the God of Israel, and in their promotion of the Gospel of our Jesus Christ as the savior and final judge of the world, can expect opposition. They may benefit society in all sorts of ways by their intelligence, insight, wisdom, skills, and service, but they will still be accused of bigotry and envied for their faithfulness.

Like Daniel, they must carry on with their worship and service. They know that their God is sovereign over all the kingdoms of men and determines their set times. They are wise enough to see through the empty promises of tolerance (with its mantra of "live and let live") and multiculturalism (with its deceptive claims of neutrality and fairness). They will continue to turn many to righteousness because they have a Gospel mission to the world and the hope of a resurrection.

2

Dickson Ngama has a PhD in Old Testament and is a Teaching Fellow for the John W. Rawlings School of Divinity while finishing his second PhD in Theology and Apologetics.

1

My limited knowledge of Charles Taylor’s ideas is derived from YouTube videos of his lectures and interviews. See for example: Disenchantment and Secularity, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3Hy31vv3uY; Origins of the Self and the Secular Age, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3TmQUo-hqHM (accessed 04/06/2020) Trevin Wax, 3 Definitions of “Secular” and Why They Matter for Our Mission, October 21, 2014. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/ blogs/trevin-wax/3-definitions-of-secular-and-why-they-matter-for-ourmission/ (accessed 04/08/2020) 3

Janet Epp Buckingham, “The relationship between religions and a secular society,” Creed, freedom of religion and human rights - Special issue of Diversity Magazine - Volume 9:3 Summer 2012. http://www. ohrc.on.ca/en/creed-freedom-religion-and-human-rights-special-issuediversity-magazine-volume-93-summer-2012/relationship-betweenreligions-and-secular-society (accessed 04/08/2020).

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See pages 1076-1079 of Erin K. Wilson, “‘Power Differences’ and ‘the Power of Difference’: The Dominance of Secularism as Ontological Injustice,” Globalizations, vol. 14, no. 7 (2017): 1076–1093, https://doi. org/10.1080/14747731.2017.1308062 (accessed 04/10/2020).

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For more on this interplay of power in the book of Daniel, see Mark D. Allen and Dickson Ngama, “Power that Prevails: Leadership in the Book of Daniel” in Biblical Leadership: Theology for the Everyday Leader, ed.

Benjamin K. Forrest and Chet Roden (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2017), 235-248.

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Faculty Contribution

Kahlib J. Fischer Professor of Government, Helms School of Government, Liberty University

COVENANT, LEADERSHIP, AND THE GODS OF OUR AGE False gods used to roam the earth, demanding worship and accolades. Some were the emperor-gods — those vile kings who tried to deify themselves, wrapping themselves in religion in order to coerce the adoration and obedience of the people. Some were fragments and facets of nature itself, as people sought to understand and control the angry and violent forces of wind and famine, drought, and storm. Above all else, these false gods emanated from the secure refuge of the human heart, where they were lovingly birthed and nurtured.

They were an infestation that began in our very heart of hearts and spread outward, poisoning our interactions with others, our families and communities, and all of the facets of our lives and society. That is no less true today. While the quest of this article is to discuss leadership in today’s secular age, the reality is that those false gods are still alive today as much as they always have been. Secularism itself, with its reliance on only our senses and reason, is one of many false gods enthroned in our culture. By looking at these deities, born out of arrogance and rebellion, perhaps we can better understand what it means to lead well, in such a way that honors and brings glory to Christ.

First, let us take a moment to define leadership and contrast it with its competing false god. Leadership is an act of positive influence that demonstrates care for others, impassions others for the truth, builds a sense of teamwork, collaboration and mutual care and support, and creates a sense of shared vision and excitement — excitement about good and holy things.

Leadership is more about influence and not position, and in fact Christ Himself demonstrated that true, biblical leaders are servant leaders (Matthew 20:28).

From the communication of ideas and the creation of vision to the implementation of that vision, leaders walk with humility and accountability. Yes, they empower their followers, but more importantly, they recognize that everyone is made in God’s image, and therefore have insights, wisdom, and skills which must be acknowledged and operationalized. They recognize

the power and gifts already possessed by people and then get out of the way.

Covenant Leadership All of this is further encapsulated by the biblical idea of covenant. My friends, family, co-workers, or leaders who might be reading this were doubtless waiting for me to pivot to this idea; it has been a guiding theme for me since I was in grad school, working on my master’s in public policy. Later on, as I completed my Ph.D. in organizational leadership, I decided to make the focus of my dissertation a study of the impact of covenantal principles in the realm of organizational leadership and behavior. Meanwhile, all of this academic learning occurred while I was going to a church where covenant was at work in very personal and endearing ways — people were clinging to Christ together, confessing their sins to one another, loving and gently exhorting one another, and overcoming the effects of living in a sinful and broken world together.

That combination of heart-level and book learning was very powerful for me. In my classes and research, I was learning how the uniquely biblical idea of covenantal (or federal) theology was practiced in colonial America. Church covenants (like the Mayflower compact)1 became the cultural and religious seedbed for state governments and eventually our federal (or covenantal) government.2 To say that our national government is covenantal is to say that it recognizes the set-apart sovereignty of the states and the people.

This is due to the acknowledgement in the American colonies at the time that if God would deign a covenant with man and hold Himself accountable to His agreement with them, no man should seek to lord himself over others. Leadership is a gift bestowed upon a person by followers, rather than power a tyrant lords over others. And for a true covenant to work, everyone must be equally empowered and accountable — state

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and local governments, local communities, churches, non-profits, businesses, and yes, even individual citizens bear the burden and the blessing alike of living in a covenantal system.

This is a messy process of shared power; it is not decentralization but rather non-centralization.

Decentralization occurs when the top leadership team decides to create a flatter organization; noncentralization is a reflection that the power does not come from the top leadership team at all. Power comes from the people and emanates up to create structures and processes of governance. And while it is messier, it is also more robust. Because all members of the covenant community are actively engaged, people can fill in the gaps whenever one member falls short.

Why active engagement works so well is because of the spirit behind the covenantal agreements. Certainly, covenants protect the rights of the people, but they also require the people to love and care for another. After all, the operative word in the Hebrew for covenant is hesed and it essentially means that love and duty are intertwined.3 Christ personified hesed on the cross; He went the extra mile to save us, even though (and because) we were thoroughly guilty as covenantbreakers. Imagine then, a nation, organization, family, or any interpersonal relationship where these ideas are at work — mutual accountability and care, active and loving engagement (which includes speaking the truth, but gently and not in a spirit of accusation), participative decision-making, and so forth. Ultimately, it takes an act of God to do this well, and immediately it becomes apparent that if a leader is going to be successful in this paradigm, they must seek to affirm and engender the empowerment of everyone involved, and yes, must love and serve them. It cannot be about one person; effective leadership must impact the culture, structure, and processes of whatever organizational engagement is happening.

The gods of the Age In our secular age, we are obviously uncomfortable with such notions, and our false gods quickly seek to assert their lordship. When given leadership responsibilities, it can be easy to hoard power rather than share and engender it in others. It can be easy to want to feel essential — so that the entire organization would implode if we ever left. And we are quick to see social problems as the domain of the federal government rather than that of empowered and engaged communities — the former is fueled by

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taxes and sometimes distant bureaucracies; the latter involves real, active, and persistent engagement with our neighbors. When personal relationship challenges arise, we too quickly measure our commitment in terms of whether we still love the other person, rather than seeing that if we truly love them, we are dutybound to work out the conflict as much as we honestly can, with a clear conscience. Our false gods are angered by all of this, and their names are pride, selfishness, fear, self-ease, comfort, and apathy.

In the war for supremacy, the false gods will countenance no nuance, no acknowledgement that often what appear to be competing goals are actually ideas that must be held together in constant tension.

Isn’t it possible to defend the institutions of family and church on the one hand while actively fighting racism, chauvinism, and the sins of sexual abuse on other? But there seems to be too much animosity to admit the need for nuance. In contrast, embracing this nuance is part of what it means to be a leader, because ultimately, leadership is about protecting and promoting the truth.

Nuancing Applied Leadership Ultimately, leadership is never without context. It must always function in the real, harried, rough and tumble world, one often marred by political scheming, limited resources, and Kafkaesque scenarios. The problem is not understanding what effective leadership is; rather, the problem is walking it out in ways that matter.

Ideas like transformational and servant leadership, empowerment, etc., are not so difficult to understand.

One of the first questions leadership students are asked is whether leadership is different from management.

In theory, leaders inspire and managers, well, just manage. Managers focus on tasks; leaders focus on people. But in the real world, it is not so clear cut.

No leader would be effective without having the requisite management skills because no job is solely about building relationships. A great “people person” who is loquacious and passionate, but who cannot be counted on to manage even the simplest of tasks, is not a leader. And no manager can manage well without some effective people skills because most tasks are done by, well, people.

So no, it is not the understanding of the leadership concepts that is the problem; it is the application of those ideas that creates the real dilemma. If my mid-level management experience is any indication, the challenge with making time to care for people and empower them is that there are so many tasks in the workday and the

inbox. You would think it might come more naturally to me as a leadership Ph.D., but mid-level management and probably organizational leadership in general is not kind to idealism and mere sentiment.

But of course, there is hope, because there was One who came to us and provided recourse to all that ails us. It is easy to think that Christ was on trial before Pilate, but the irony about Christ’s trial is that we were the ones who were really being judged that fateful night. Self-righteous leaders, corrupt politicians, hardcore religious authoritarians who did not have faith but instead reduced themselves to a list of things they did, so myopic in their focus that they couldn’t see the incarnate God among them; the angry crowds who responded with more passion and conviction than truth; and ambivalent citizens who didn’t even care to know what was going on — all of humanity was indeed on trial.

The opening article provided a warning for how the idea of being a Champion for Christ can be reduced to triteness — a false god, even. And in that sense, the trial of Christ is proof positive of what human effort leads us to — feckless triteness. Our false gods are weak — wood, hay, and stubble, the chaff that blows away in the wind with the slightest touch of a righteous God. Do you want to be able to recite leadership platitudes and perhaps some scholarly research on the topic? Sure, no problem. But do you want the ability to actually love and care for people when your inbox is exploding with cascading tasks, and organizational goals have changed at the last minute because of new market pressures, or some of the people you have loved and cared for have seemingly abandoned you? Then yes, we need divine intervention.

Do you want to talk about a biblical/covenantal ideas like “mutual accountability”? Sure, that’s easy to do in theory. But learning to take the time to engage someone from another department about a decision which you need to make but which will impact their routines — well, that takes time and humility. And by the way, in today’s turbulent, fractured arena of scorched-earth politics, it is even harder to listen and engage. Would you like me to talk about the importance of empowerment — a key idea which in my continued research and writing on leadership seems to be linked to every leadership and organizational best practice? I can do that easily enough. Everyone wants to be empowered — we all want the freedom to make decisions. However, we do not like sharing that empowerment with others.

FA I T H A N D T H E A C A D E M Y: E N G A G I N G T H E C U LT U R E W I T H G R A C E A N D T R U T H

Just as the Gospel challenges everything in us and about us — from the machinations of our society to the very core of our hearts — we should resolve to understand the power of Gospel-centered leadership from heart, to head, to home, and to all the twists and turns of culture and society.

On Being a Champion for Christ The cynical gods of our age (and disaffected college professors/students) groan at trite slogans. It is especially galling to them because those tropes are often also comprehensively and abidingly true. So here is one to ponder: we cannot be a Champion for Christ unless Christ is our Champion — unless and until we allow Him to remake us from heart to head, from motive to action. If we want to lead well and make a difference by loving, empowering, and leading, we have to surrender first and fully. That can take a lifetime. In that famous and glorious trial, Pilate asked, “What is truth?” But that was the wrong question. The real question should

have been, “Who is truth?” He stood before Pilate that day and now stands before the Father for us. His name is Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd become sacrificial lamb, the judger of nations and friend of the forsaken, our risen King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Let’s cling to Him, together. And then we’ll begin to understand what it means to lead well. And our leadership efforts will shine with His glory, honor, truth, and immortality (Romans 2:6-7).

Daniel J. Elazar, Covenant & Constitutionalism : the Great Frontier and the Matrix of Federal Democracy. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998.

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2 Donald S. Lutz, From Covenant to Constitution in American Political Thought. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1980.

3 See Gordon R. Clark, The Word Hesed in the Hebrew Bible. Sheffield, England. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 1993, and Daniel J. Elazar, Covenant and Polity in Biblical Israel: Biblical Foundations and Jewish Expressions. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995.

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Guest Contribution

Tim Laniak Creator of Bible Journey Curriculum and Senior Professor of Biblical Studies, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Charlotte, N.C.

RAISING SHEPHERDS Visit shepherdleader.com for additional resources and information on shepherding.

In this edition of Faith and the Academy, Liberty is exploring the implications of its mission to Train Champions for Christ. This is a contextualized discussion; “champions” is a distinct word that links to the conversation about biblical leadership development within the university. Jack Carson’s editorial contrasts two types of champions, much as Jesus did in Luke 22:25. While some may be tempted to see Carson’s “Champion of the Other” as simply a reflection of “servant leadership” — the most common way of describing the biblical view of leadership — I’d like to suggest that “shepherd leadership” is far more central to the vision of forming “Champions of the Other.” The image of a shepherd leader in the Bible is more comprehensive in scope and used more often than the idea of servant leadership throughout Scripture. In reflecting on this image, we will find a healthy place for both service and authority. Much of what I have to say here is the result of a triangle of research that includes biblical theology, field interviews among Bedouin shepherds, and intense dialogue with Christian leaders. I trust these brief reflections will prove relevant for continued thinking about student formation at Liberty University.

It was 2003 when I began my first field interviews in the Middle East. One of the most memorable was with Jordanian Bedouin Abu-Jamal.1 When I asked him how long it usually takes to become a good shepherd, he responded, “What really matters is that you have the heart for it. If you do, you can begin tomorrow.” After a pause, he continued, “My sons don’t have the heart for this work so they don’t deserve the business. I’ll sell the flocks to someone else before I let them go to those who don’t care.”

Having watched my 13-year old son among his sheep, he said something more surprising: “Your son has the heart for the animals. I can see it. You tell him that, if he wants, he can come stay with me. I’ll give him

Scripture says, "I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding" (Jeremiah 3:15).

Most of Israel's pastoral imagery is grounded in two traditions: Moses as God's under-shepherd and David as shepherd-king.

These traditions provided prototypes for leaders that followed and formed the background for the ministry of Jesus, the good shepherd. The pastoral role was central to the ongoing life of local churches in the Christian movement, and today's pastors are still called to be shepherds after God's own heart, to lead his people, living on the margins of settled society, to their eternal home. This text draws on a wide range of Old and New Testament texts to develop the biblical theology of "shepherd" imagery, and concludes with some principles and implications for contemporary pastoral ministry.

Timothy S. Laniak, Shepherds after My Own Heart: Pastoral traditions of Leadership in the Bible, NSBT 20 (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2015). $26.99.

Timothy S. Laniak, Shepherds Watch Their Flock: 40 Daily Reflections on Biblical Discipleship (Charlotte, NC: ShepherdLeader Publications, 2007). $14.95.

FA I T H A N D T H E A C A D E M Y: E N G A G I N G T H E C U LT U R E W I T H G R A C E A N D T R U T H

two hundred sheep, a wife, and a good Jordanian education in any school he wants.”

As you might imagine, my son didn’t take him up on the offer for the sheep — or anything else! — but I took away a huge lesson: Shepherding is about the heart. I had been working with a major project on biblical leadership before moving to Jerusalem.

The theme verse was Jeremiah 3:15: “I will give you shepherds after my own heart who will lead you with knowledge and understanding.”2 I heard in the Bedouin’s words an echo of the Divine Shepherd and His priorities. Shepherds are leaders who must have a certain kind of heart to be trusted with the authority of herding the owner’s flock.

So let’s take a quick journey into Scripture to see how central the shepherd image is and what that image conveyed to those who knew it well. Abraham, Moses, and David were all shepherds — literally. Moses and David were both, metaphorically, shepherds of God’s flock. In the historical psalms, God is the one who led His people “… like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (Psalm 77:20). In Psalm 78, the Divine Shepherd provided, protected, and guided His people in the desert. “He brought his people out like a flock; he led them like sheep through the desert. He guided them safely, so they were unafraid. … He drove out nations before them and allotted lands to them as an inheritance” (Psalm 78:52-55). Fast forwarding to a later period, the psalmist concludes: “He chose David His servant and took him from the sheep pens; from tending the sheep He brought him to be the shepherd of His people Jacob, of Israel his inheritance.

And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them” (Psalm 78:70-72).

God chose Moses and David at pivotal moments in redemptive history to serve as His shepherds.

Both figures loom large in the biblical story line and become paradigmatic for biblical leadership. Notice that their roles are not limited to “service” as we might expect from Jesus’ words in Luke 22. They had authority — delegated authority — and they used it to lead God’s people in His paths.

Shepherding language comes into play later for the prophets especially in their critique of self-serving leadership. In fact, faithless kings, prophets, and priests were held responsible for the Exile. Good shepherds should feed the flock, but bad shepherds were fleecing the flock and butchering them for their own food (Ezekial 34:2-3). Like Abu-Jamal, God was angry about those who saw the flock solely as a business venture to exploit. “You have not strengthened the weak or healed

the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally” (Ezekial 34:4). Authority turned into abuse. In response, God promised to rescue his flock personally, to care for them, and to judge between them. Yes, God the shepherd is both rescuer and judge. Other prophets affirm God’s promises of new leadership in the coming restoration, referring to himself as Israel’s Divine Shepherd (Isaiah 40:11) and to future leaders as “shepherds after my own heart” (Jeremiah 3:15). The context for this “service” in all cases is authority, the responsibility and the ability to do good and to promote good.

When Jesus comes in the Gospels, He is the Divine Shepherd incarnate (Mark 6:34), the quintessential Good Shepherd (John 10) who sends out His disciples to the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 10:6). Jesus is not like Israel’s shepherds who are more like thieves and wolves (John 10). He is the shepherd who fulfills all that was promised about the coming Son of David (Ezekial 34:23-24).

The leaders of the apostolic Church continued to see themselves as shepherds among God’s people (Acts 20:28-31; 1 Peter 5:1-4) rather than selfserving shepherds (Jude 1:12). Unfortunately, the English term “pastor” hides the metaphoric reference to shepherd in key passages like Ephesians 4:11. Throughout the Epistles, the metaphor of shepherd implies both service and authority, always in the context of accountability to the “shepherd and overseer of your souls” (1 Peter 2:25), the “Chief Shepherd” (1 Peter 5:4), “that Great Shepherd of the sheep” (Hebrews 13:20).

A deep dive into the shepherding theme reveals a foundational recognition of God as the ultimate and true shepherd of His people. Human leaders are delegated proxies. Lest that seem in any way marginal, the Bible reveals what I call a “divine preference for human agency.”3 We are consistently deputized to manage God’s mission in the world. We are accountable as sons, stewards, slaves, and shepherds.

We mediate His leadership among His people. We are commissioned to use our delegated authority to promote the wellbeing of others through shepherdlike provision, protection, and guidance.4 As I interviewed Bedouin shepherds, I found them remarkably balanced in their leadership. They tenderly nurture their newborns and sick, diligently seek the lost and carry them home, and use their acute sensibilities to find pasture and water. These are the

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same shepherds who also crawl into caves to make sure they are safe, stay awake at night to protect the flocks from predators, and often engage in physical combat with thieves or wolves. One shepherd described the courage of the Bedouin as “stout of heart.” I immediately thought about the normal use of heart in English which tends toward compassion. But courage is also in the heart.

I came to realize that the challenges of leadership mirrored the work of shepherds by day and by night.

The daylight is when leading and caring go together.

The night is when commitment is tested. If you only took care of a flock in the day, you would literally be fattening them up for the kill at night. Many predators will rip through a flock, leaving a massacre of dead animals behind if a shepherd is not alert and well-prepared for the challenge. And there are fights among the flock to settle as well (cf. Ezekial 34:2022). As I have spoken with leaders of churches, denominations, ministry organizations, and Christian businesses, I have noticed these two sides of leadership play out repeatedly, though often without balance.

The good field shepherd has a compassionate, nurturing side, perhaps best symbolized by the staff.

Good shepherds also have a courageous, protective side, symbolized by the rod. These are the two aspects of “heart” I learned from the Bedouin. Finding these two fully operational in a creative tension is unusual in human leadership because our temperaments tend to drive us to one extreme or the other. The empathy and compassion of the nurturer is an endearing trait, and many find this to be the sole emphasis of “servant leadership.” But the shadow side of a “mercy” leader can be a boundary-less, people-pleasing codependence that prefers flight when there’s conflict.

People become vulnerable before predators and wander for lack of order.

In contrast, what a protective shepherd lacks in compassion, he/she makes up for in a concern for truth, justice, equity, rules, and order. Hence the rod of discipline, a necessary symbol of authority.

The shadow side of the protector is a judgmental authoritarianism and a willingness to lose relationships to enforce rules. Truth trumps mercy.

This kind of shepherd prefers to fight when there’s a conflict. These leaders are more like the police and military, guard dogs who can think like wolves, and sometimes become wolves.

Is this distinction only about our leadership preferences?

By no means. It is actually a profoundly theological tension that relates back to the character of God, our Divine Shepherd. He is both healer and judge, restorer and discipliner, merciful and holy, love and truth. When we drift toward the shadow side of our own leadership style, we cannot assume that we at least have one half of the leadership challenge mastered. No. The further we drift from the creative tension of merciful service and just authority, the more skewed and ungodly each becomes. At either extreme we become increasingly unlike the God of the Bible.

The challenge for biblical student formation is to raise up God-like shepherds. That begins where Psalm 23:1 starts: God is my Shepherd. We follow first. Professors and administrators, students and staff — we are all followers who make sure we submit to God’s ultimate leadership and to his delegated leadership. We emulate the Divine Shepherd we follow by being ambidextrous in our leadership — sometimes offering a staff of comfort and reassurance and sometimes taking out the rod of authority to enforce discipline. Both service and authority are necessary to create flourishing in the flock; both compassion and courage are essential to be a “Champion of the Other.” Paul did not sit at one extreme in his ministry. He was ready for whatever the context required. “What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a rod of discipline, or shall I come in love and with a gentle spirit?” (1 Corinthians 4:21). Paul was a balanced leader who carried both a staff and a rod.

I pray that Liberty would be the kind of environment where God-like shepherds grow to understand their delegated authority to serve others. May they have inculcated within them the heart of Divine Shepherd.

This story, and others like it, are found in While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks. See pp 29-30.

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2

All Scripture references are taken from the New International Version.

3

Shepherds After My Own Heart (p 248)

“Provision, Protection and Guidance” is the organizing rubric for the content of While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks.

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Guest Contribution

61 Ramona Simut Professor at Emanuel University of Oradea, Romania

CROSSREADINGS INTO LEADERSHIP A temptation of the culture that we now inhabit is to inquire into less demanding, more earthly images of a leader. For, the standard we once had, the integrity of our character, the verticality of our ways, and the candor of our hearts is but a reminiscence of a leadership we once recognized but has since become extinct. In the meantime, individualism has become the word of the day, and people have become estranged to the point that formerly shared principles and values are but memories, while divine leadership models are increasingly rejected. When we reject these models, we end up seeking new pictures, images, and types of leaders which reflect our own fallen image. As the March 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review shows, MBA graduates excelled in areas that had little to do with leadership.1 To address this curricular shortcoming, faculty sought to include literary fiction texts in their curricula in order to help these students develop a vision of what constitutes a leader — their attributes, virtues, values, and roles.

Readings were chosen to equip students on their path toward “leadership, decision making, moral judgment, and self-knowledge.”2 On the surface, such

a pursuit should engender a leader more empathetic and interdisciplinarily equipped. Such an approach to leadership then recognizes that leadership is more than simply an economic formula pointing to the bottom line.

The Leader: A Modern Literary Image The literary approach to leadership training in this renewed curriculum, purposed to develop moral judgment and self-knowledge in future leaders, included a list that is as impressive as it is surprising.

Titles vary from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Such texts offer common sources of critical and ethical debate in business schools for at least two main reasons. First, we are told, students “can learn as much about leadership from [those] as you would from any business book or academic journal, because their lessons are certainly no less valuable and probably just as pragmatic.” Secondly, these texts “are about questions of character and choice” as they speak to our emotional intelligence,

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since they imply taking responsibilities, which parenthetically means “coming to grip with your ‘secret’ side, your shadow side, your reflective side.”3 In much the same line of thought, Scotty McLennan, lecturer in political economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business and its former dean of religious life, argues that one could find “top leadership lessons” not exclusively in “the business aisle,” but rewardingly so in his list of eleven classic novels, of which we only mention a few: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, Camus’ The Plague, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.4 This is indeed a compilation of sources that readers are encouraged to peruse because of the multiple contexts, images, and themes that they encompass.

McLennan attempts to give the full picture of his list’s significance for the spiritual well-being of his school and the future graduate’s development into a decision-making and morally-guiding leader. His thesis is that cultural notions of spirituality are the secret weapon of the entrepreneur for they boost optimism and productivity. His list suggests that modern writers like Hesse, Camus, and Miller represent not only “thought-provoking and the most beautiful business reading list of all times,” but they also offer inspirational texts that he says are even good enough for sermons. For example, he argues that Siddhartha “struggles to combine business with spirituality,” oftentimes at the expense of his own mental and physical health, as he comes painfully close to committing suicide. On the other hand, Camus’ characters face “powerful ways of clearing the deck,”5 and Willy Loman’s sin is not trusting his peers and family enough so that he’d stop asking them to see life though his eyes and take jobs at odds with their nature.

Any literature major would by now know that these books’ matter in hand is not foremost ethical or spiritual. On the contrary, although they can be taken to endorse any interpretation or analysis, they in fact tackle issues like artistic irony and self-critique, decadence and despair, degradation and abuse (either physical or psychological), corruption and crime, the modern man’s lack of identity and de-personalization, the brutal awareness of wanton and spiritual disintegration, and more. Their reading is hardly a lesson about the virtues of spirituality and leadership; instead, texts like these lead us to delve into the deep, complex waters of psychological analysis, as they intend to evoke the complete social decadence of their

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times and peoples. In this context, it is interesting to see how McLennan introduces this list with such praise of their constructive value for the creation of moral, decision-making leaders.

One of the reasons why it is chancy to infer that modern literature can produce good moral discourses or paradigms is because they fail to reach the intended purpose of transformation. While it is true that “literature allows access to the inner lives of its characters,”6 it is also true that these characters are individuals whose drama is theirs only, since the others cannot fathom the full measure of their tragedy.

One of the characters in this list, which McLennan mentions in his sermon about “enduring values and things that are ultimately fleeting,” is Zohra from Naguib Mahfouz’s Miramar. This is a text which, according to him, exemplifies sexual harassment; however, he also suggests that the meaning is more nuanced and is really about women in the modern workplace. The problem here is that understanding literary fiction preferentially and transferring it to the economy aisle in order to raise the desired leadership traits in future business graduates is again a risky adventure. Let me be more straightforward.

Precisely because these characters’ lives are so individualistic in all modern and contemporary short stories, novels, and other types of narratives, they cannot fit as a glove on someone else’s life pattern and problems, on someone else’s contingent reality or case study. Moreover, these modern characters are not trustworthy specifically because they evolve; they are neither sober nor stable, and they have not yet matured beyond their final page. Many of them are not even fully evolved characters, nor will they ever be by the end of the story. Thus one cannot live or set standards for a lifetime based on a character’s part-time experience with real life. Their subjectivity shows that many of them are not even full characters.

Therefore, it is challenging to even suppose that they have a genuine perspective on their situation or at least a propitious view on life. To be sure, these concerns fall beyond the scope of modern literature.

The Leader: A Rejected Image McLennan shows how little confidence he has that literature is a science in itself when he forces its content to fit his personalized depictions of success, leaders, and the workplace. According to him, the optimism, happiness, and the sense of spiritual fulfillment that the future leader is encouraged to reach and promote are more likely to come from

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secular readings with an ethereal hint than from unfiltered devotional references. Although leadership certainly involves more than managing a situation, preferential interpretation fails to see that there are different types of leaders and particular types of discourses/literatures. This takes us a step further into acknowledging that, although literary fiction stimulates reader’s imagination into decision making, there are particular decisions leaders must make within their fields that literature may not speak directly to.

It is surprising to see that in today’s academic programs that more or less stipulate a religious code, bibliographies almost entirely exclude comprising and intelligible texts such as the Bible — a book that appeals to both our pragmatic and visionary pursuits.

One clumsily thinks that the Gospel is less relevant for people today primarily because it depicts a much too elevated and robust image of a leader in all areas of life. One searches for contexts where a more mundane and flexible image of the leader is likely to be found, based on the idea that it will indeed inspire one to become a notable individual. Thus, we seem to have resorted to different strategies of accommodating this image not to an ideal but to a compliant and manageable representation of theoretical leadership.

We fail to see how, for example, the portrait of the Good Shepherd in John 10 could intersect our design of the leader. Instead of emulating the traits of the Shepherd (who is the “door,” the “voice,” the “caller,” the “forerunner”), instead of realizing that the others follow due to the way he leads, we prefer to redirect attention to narratives that accommodate actual pictures of “thieves,” “robbers,” and total “strangers,” in the hope that we will somehow learn from their mistakes and be inspired. If the definition is still in place, a leader is someone who leads towards change. But more that than that, the leader comes to the rescue, because — just like the Shepherd — he should seek that we “have life, and have it to the full.”

As evidence shows, this last quality is very unspecific to any political leader or corporatist authority. In fact, as many individuals throughout time have demonstrated, it would be foolish of them to even pretend they own it.

While there is no algorithm for a perfect leader, it becomes clear that this is not a profession per se, but a lifetime occupation. If we look closer in modern literature, we see that it is rather a place for permutation, uncertainty, and an improbable source of leaders. Authors retreat in themselves or some other place, and their work is deeply subjective,

almost narcissistic. In general, it is oriented towards form and disinterested in social issues because the authors feel how society and politics disappoint.

Modern narratives, on the other hand, pay no heed to conventional language, thus the reader can never be sure as to the meaning behind a certain word or idea in a story which becomes increasingly obscure.

Some of its representatives were partisans of Nazism and fascism and fought for them, yet others were abhorred by these ideologies and fought against them, and still the two groups are to this day associated with the same conglomerate literary movement. These narratives insist on redirecting attention from action and its banal characters to the more substantial role of the author, since the modern novel is the twilight of the heroes. That being said, if such characters were to inspire today’s leaders, it would reflect on their shortcomings because of their ineptitude to grow and multiply. Leadership is, perhaps, one of the few disciplines that transcend our contingency, since its perfection is constantly and inherently postponed.

The threat that we now face is to have but a sketch of a leader and not the full picture, for we want it to be as accessible and immediate as possible.

Jesus did not come as a leader per se. But in His coming He led the way for fallen people to reconcile with the Father. While some had hoped that His incarnation would bring revolution, He did not come to free people from political bondage or economic turmoil. His contemporaries may have dreamed of leaders in the likeness of Moses, who delivered a whole nation. However, in Jesus’ case they only read between the lines and did not double-check the accuracy of the information they had of Him. Firstly, they were wrong in their assumptions that He was from Nazareth, thus they thought He was not really the Messiah, which means that historically and geographically what He was did not do justice to the portrait of the national savior they had in mind.

They thought He was supposed to free them, yet He preached loudly that He had come to suffer and to die, a plan which ruined their present expectations and their eschatological hopes. What they required was a realistic commander to fix their present situation as a nation, a prospect which although limited was manageable nonetheless. Secondly, they wanted a plan that was easily attainable, since people gathered around Him and already benefited from His miracles and gifts. He was already a leader who did not have to call on people. According to their plans, all He had to do was be Himself: preach with power, heal and perform miracles, multiply bread, and at times chastise the Pharisees, who permanently found faults

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in their behavior and religious life. This unexpected, nonconformist, selfless leader they were happy to follow, and theirs was a ready-made plan. But they lost perspective on their political situation and their souls as well. At a personal level, these “followers” would leave Him when they had enough sufficiency; they also left Him alone in the garden prior to His trial and at the cross prior to His death. In the end, He was not their desired leader with the laurel wreath around His head.

they instead “electing” a leader because they want someone new, different, daring, or just the lesser evil?

A leader is always either the wise — who is usually rejected, since growing into such a leader takes an unforeseeable amount of time — or, as C.S. Lewis would say, the clever devil, who fits many agendas today and can literally evolve within days, perhaps in no longer than the time needed to read eleven novels.

The problem with leaders who only get praise without suffering and with followers who only partake in their leaders’ fame and success is similar to the problem which the so-called “rational” Christians today have, namely that although they enjoy the benefit of Jesus’ suffering and death, they want instant relief.7 They question the necessity that, as true followers of Jesus, they too need to take His yoke upon them and “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).

1

In all this effort of being a true leader with true followers, the question is if the leader is ready to assume the suffering and if the followers are willing to be patient with the leader’s long-term plan. Or are

See Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr., Professor of Business Ethics at Harvard Business School in his Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership through Literature, Harvard Business School Press, 2006, hbr. org.

2

Ibid.

3

Ibid.

Rachel Gillet, “Top Leadership Lessons from 11 Classic Novels”, interview with Scotty McLennan, inc.com (May 4, 2016).

4

5

Ibid.

6

Ibid.

Marion Ledwig, God’s Rational Warriors: The Rationality of Faith Considered (Frankfurt and Paris: Ontos Verlag, and Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Books, 2008), 190-191.

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Alumni Contribution

Chaplain Justin Bernard Liberty Alumni LCDR, CHC, USN

LEADERSHIP AS PRESENCE John Maxwell once wrote, “Leadership is influence.

Nothing more, nothing less.” With all due respect to Maxwell, I think there might be more. Influence has become a catchphrase in recent years; the term is now commonly used to describe “influencers” who use social media to persuade their followers to use a certain product, drink a particular kind of water, or stay at a specific hotel chain. Gaining followers on Instagram and collecting “likes” on one’s thoughts might seem like a form of leadership, but it is only scratching the surface. Influence, despite its appeal, is not the telos of leadership.

Ministry of Presence Leadership is personal and messy. It is hard and scary. It is rewarding and fulfilling. I am not in the business of regularly critiquing the leadership sages that have come before me, but defining leadership as influence can only go as far as the leader is willing to walk with those whom they wish to lead. “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). Those are the words the Apostle Paul gives to believers as he beckons us to be influenced not just by his words but also how he lives. Leadership is more than just influence; it is also presence. This definition of leadership, particularly in ministry, was forged in my heart and mind when I walked the campus of Liberty University as a young seminarian. Now, it has become my reality the last 12 years as I have had the honor of serving as a Naval Officer and Chaplain in the United States Navy. Vocati ad Servitum or “Called to Serve” is our motto, and caring for sailors, marines, and guardians is our way of life. As I reflected on my call to ministry on Liberty Mountain, I learned how Jesus walked with His disciples, patiently leading them to the work before them to engage their culture and eventually “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). Even as He left, He sent a helper that would continue to be with them as a real and indwelling presence. When I read the words of Paul who showed us, “To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some”

(1 Corinthians 9:22), I remember my first foray into leadership as presence. As an RA at Liberty, I found out what it meant to literally live with those that you were called to shepherd, and to set a testimony before them that would be just as above reproach at midnight in and around the dorms as it would be at noon walking the halls to class. These were the biblical and practical lessons that would be the foundation of my current ministry that calls my family and I to live life among our people and to be present with them in the greatest of joys and in the deepest of sorrows. Robert Crick in his book Outside the Gates writes, “The value of the presence of a chaplain in crisis situations is immeasurable. They are reminders of the sacredness of the participants in great and terrible life events. They are a reminder that God is still present, even in the most catastrophic moments.”99 Presence is how Jesus led, and presence is how I get to lead. Henri Nouwen described, More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. … But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, but truly love them.100

Cultural Agility In order to lead with presence, I had to learn how to speak the language, wear the uniform, and understand the mission long before I could empathize with a Sailor or Marine in distress. In the Marine Corps, the colloquial phrase “Semper Gumby” (I am told that’s Latin for “Always flexible”) is used to express a Marine’s ability to adjust to any and all situations in which they find themselves. Every couple of years I get orders to a new location and along with my amazing wife and daughter, we pack all our earthly belongings

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and move across the country (or around the world) to go live life with another group of people. This is hard enough to move to a new place, but as a chaplain, we often enter a new subculture of the military with every permanent change of station (PCS). Whether walking a flight line in the remote desert of Arizona, on the deck of an amphibious transport ship in the North Arabian Gulf, or on the parade deck of the Oldest Post of the Corps in Washington, D.C., the task of being present is always before me regardless of locale. Each change of scenery is another culture to understand and engage, another set of institutional norms and ways of life to adapt to, and another venue where Gospel conversations can happen. I have found these opportunities to lead while celebrating the marriage covenant with a Marine and his new bride, in the midst of counseling a sailor in the late hours of the night as he contemplated suicide, as I stood with a grieving mother at the graveside of her son at Arlington National Cemetery, or on the tarmac of Dover Air Force Base awaiting the dignified transfer of our nation’s heroes. To become relevant in each place as a Christian leader means to rely less on myself and more on Christ to help me comprehend the needs of the culture around me, and to seize opportunities to lead service members to become spiritually fit just as much as they are physically.

This type of leadership cannot be forced from afar, but rather is fed and nurtured when I am immersed in the culture of each duty station, squadron, or ship.

Crick writes, “The great task before Christian workers, chaplains in particular, is to find a way to work within the systems of this world in order to redeem and sanctify those systems in the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, who sends them.”101 Contextualization, or cultural agility as I have come to call it in military chaplaincy, is paramount to this type of leadership and ministry. One must come to know how to serve their people in the tangled web of instructions, standard operating procedures, and chains of command of which they will be a part. The Christian chaplain must comprehend and become a student of the institution

so that they can operate within, care for, and serve their people regardless of faith tradition, and conduct the work of the Gospel, all while navigating the intricacies of the institution. I think this is what we mean when we speak of being in the world but not of it.

More than Words This intentional, agile presence is the reality for every Christian leader who wishes to lead with more than just influence. Modern day influencers have great platforms, and some even have extraordinary causes to get behind. But as Christian leaders, if we have only words to influence the world and forsake the opportunity to live genuine, intimate, firsthand experiences with those to whom we are called to minister and lead, I believe we fall short of true cultural engagement, and in so doing, abdicate our God-given talents to voices with a lesser message. I pray we see the value of presence and the weight it holds in building relationships that lead to life change and subsequently, cultural change for the sake of the Gospel. Our leadership presence applies Paul’s admonition to “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Romans 10:15). The task, we have then is to cultivate our opportunities so that we are present with those whom God has called us to serve and thus find longevity in our influence on people and culture for kingdom service.

The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy, or U.S. Marine Corps.

Robert Crick, Outside the Gates: The Need for Theology, History, and Practice of Chaplaincy Ministries (Oviedo: HigherLife Development Services, 2011), Chapter. 9.

99

Henri Nouwen, Gracias!: A Latin American Journal (New York: Orbis Books, 1983): 147-148.

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Robert Crick, Outside the Gates The Need for, Theology, History, and Practice of Chaplaincy Ministries (Oviedo: Higher Life Development Services, 2011): Chapter 2.

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CRS Review

Caleb Brown B.A. in Philosophy '19

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH REFLECTIONS I came to Liberty University (LU) knowing that the academic economy ran on a type of capital called “research,” that academic riches could be accumulated in a currency called “publications,” and that institutions called “journals” issued this paper currency. Naturally, I resolved to get as many journals as possible to publish as many of my papers as possible, to demonstrate that I had done as much research as possible. I did not know what I would use the capital I amassed for, but it seemed that research was useful for arriving at the point where a prestigious academic institution would allow me to pay them lots of money to give me a degree. I also had thoughts of doing my best where God had put me. Over the course of my four years there, Liberty proved to be an environment in which I could pursue the academic entrepreneurship to which I aspired.

Research Through Coursework Liberty set the stage for academic entrepreneurship even before I arrived by offering me college credit for work I completed in high school. While some schools are stingy about awarding college credit for dual enrollment courses, CLEP tests, or AP exams, Liberty is not. Accordingly, I was able to complete most of my general education classes before I arrived on campus for my first semester. Because of this opportunity to work ahead in high school, and Liberty’s generous financial aid programs, I had more time and freedom in my degree to pursue the courses and learning opportunities I wanted to, including research.

I used this freedom from financial and temporal pressure to not merely write papers for a grade, but to write them for perfection. This pursuit then made my coursework a means of not only learning but also of investment in academic assets. While this may not be the experience of all undergraduate students, in my experience, the fields of philosophy and biblical studies contained a surprising number of opportunities for novice researchers with good ideas and the necessary work ethic to publish papers.1 As I near the end of my first year of graduate school, I have published seven

papers, ranging from more popular to scholarly, that began as class assignments at Liberty.

Generally speaking, publishable research must say something new. It is easier for an undergraduate student to say something novel about a niche subject than one that is buried under mounds of moldering articles. Thus, the niche courses I was able to take provided the most straightforward opportunity to pursue publishable research at LU. One of these courses resulted in a paper on a Muslim philosopher and another in a paper on Confucian ethics. It seems to me that the more niche subjects of these papers helped them to be accepted for publication in a prestigious undergraduate journal called Dialogue.

Research Through Established ExtraCurricular Channels The Honors Program provided an important complement to my coursework in two ways. First, it provided two forums for publication, including one interdisciplinary academic journal, The Kabod.

Second, satisfying the requirements of the Honors Program pushed me to conduct research. The Honors Program requires its students to 1) enroll in honors versions of general education courses (“honors seminars”), 2) complete additional projects that are linked to upper-level courses (“petition projects”), and 3) write a 25+ page thesis. Versions of two of the papers I wrote for honors seminars were published in two of Liberty’s online journals, and one of my petition projects produced one of the papers that Dialogue published.2 Another petition project became the first section of my thesis. While I now see this thesis’s limitations, it became the writing sample that I attached to my graduate applications to the University of Oxford, where I am completing a master’s program.

I expect that my doctoral research will culminate in a dissertation that is essentially a more extended and robust substantiation of the arguments I made in my undergraduate honor’s thesis.

About halfway through my time at Liberty, I learned that journals were not the only issuers of academic

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currency. Entities called “conferences” could also certify that you had accomplished research by allowing you to give a “presentation” — good journal papers are often born as conference presentations. Each year, Liberty hosted its own Research Week, which introduced me to presenting research verbally, not just in writing. This introduction helped make me comfortable presenting at the inter-collegiate BIG SURS conference, which Liberty hosted in my junior year. In my final year, LU committed a large amount of money to enable a number of students to attend the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Atlanta. Scrambling to manage a number of priorities, I made my PowerPoint presentation on the bus ride to Atlanta and practiced it in the hallway of a Marriott to an audience of two, very tipsy middleaged women. But they managed good feedback, and I managed the actual presentation. While chaotic, this trip helped give me the confidence to submit two presentation proposals to the upcoming American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, both of which were accepted.

Since leaving Liberty, I have realized how much research is centered around “centers.” If a university forms an academic center devoted to a given field, this center hosts seminars, discussions, and invited scholars for presentations. Thus, a center both exposes students to cutting edge research and models how research ought to be conducted. For me, the Center for Apologetics and Cultural Engagement fulfilled these functions — without participating in it I would have felt somewhat adrift in an environment like the University of Oxford, where centers drive the production of research.

forums. After a summer internship with a clean energy advocacy group in Hawaii, I began to wonder why American evangelicals’ beliefs about global warming differed from national averages. If we all have access to the same internet, why do evangelicals and nonevangelicals tend to believe different things about global warming? So, I took a research methods class and discussed my question with my professor. The next semester, she stopped me in the hallway and told me that she had discussed my research interest with one of her colleagues, and he was willing to meet to consider working together. Several months later, after receiving IRB approval from Liberty, we conducted a nationally representative survey of 934 U.S. adults.

This project has yet to reach fruition (to date, two articles on it have been rejected), but it has driven my research during the first year of my master’s degree.

In this instance, I was able to conduct research, not because Liberty had instituted a particular program or initiative, but because Liberty’s faculty were personally interested in me and in academic entrepreneurship.

Final Reflections Some of the research I conducted in my undergraduate program was not particularly significant — one paper I published is about what one contemporary scholar says about what one medieval scholar said about what one ancient scholar said. Few people will read it, and it has yet to create waves in the academic community. But even papers like this one helped me gain the skills and credentials necessary to uncover and communicate truth — skills and credentials I would not have developed apart from Liberty’s environment of academic entrepreneurship.

Researching Outside of Established Channels For those interested in seeing the opportunities in their field, I’d start with simply googling, “Undergraduate [insert your field] journals.”

1

All of the research opportunities I have discussed so far stem from Liberty’s established institutional structure and formal initiatives, but Liberty also enables students to conduct research outside of these

2 This paper is: “Differentiating Averroes’ Accounts of the Metaphysics of Human Epistemology in his Middle and Long Commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima.” Dialogue 59, nos. 2-3 (2017): 269-273.

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INTERDISCIPLINARY ESSAYS

Countercultural Love: Relational Engagement from Missions and Counseling Jeff Ritchey, Instructional Designer, Center for Academic Development, Liberty University Brigitte Ritchey, Assistant Professor, Family & Consumer Sciences, Liberty University

“Energija” was the word the young Croatian woman used to describe us. She believed we had an “energy” about us. Her story was like many of the Eastern European women we met on the mission field. She was looking, and God in His faithfulness wanted her to find what we had found years earlier. What we found — and what she was drawn to — was something she wanted so much that she walked several kilometers every week to be in our home and join us for fellowship, food, and Gospel conversations. We hope that the majority of readers have had similar experiences, where it seems that we just “showed up” or simply did our job, and yet the Holy Spirit made His sweet, beckoning presence known, almost, it seems, in spite of our best efforts. This is not to say that we should just go about our lives, assuming our mandate to make disciples will somehow supernaturally be accomplished. Perish the thought. As Christ followers, we are called to be salt and light. Yet, the ways that we are to embody this call requires an intentionality that is contextually unique for each field.

Yet, what we have found in our experiences is that there is one transcendent means for such engagement regardless of the particular context.

The surest way to engage others is through the conduit of a loving, trusting relationship. That is true in any and, indeed, all interpersonal encounters, professional or otherwise. Central to the Christian life is love. There is a lot written, talked about, and preached on the topic of how to love well. However, until it moves from an academic exercise to actual lifestyle practice, it will not make the lasting influence we hope and pray to exert on those whose lives we brush day by day. Feeling loved is experiential. Loving behavior that meets felt need must precede words, if we are to be taken seriously in building loving, trusting relationships.

Christ made it clear in Matthew 22:37-40, that the command to love God with all that we are should be our first and foremost priority. He added a second, which He designated as like it: love others as you love yourself. Our focus, then, should be to love well in a vertical relationship first, and then in our various

horizontal relationships. The order as Jesus clearly delineates is important here. First things first: put aside peripheral things to laser focus on maintaining our vital relationship with Jesus, or “remain” or “abide” in the Vine (Jesus), according to the word picture used

by Jesus in John 15. God’s desired outcome of this essential, vital union is singular: fruit. In fact, when we produce “much fruit” we show ourselves to be His true disciples (John 15:8), which is something our students, our clients, and those in our world are deeply longing to encounter in those who say they love in Jesus’ name.

Countercultural Love Being set-apart, honestly, does not always feel good.

Striving to be holy unto God goes against everything in us that screams from the baseness of our humanity and collectively what we absorb from our cultural milieu: “I’ve got this!” “Be assertive!” “Be confident!”

“Believe in yourself!” “Just do it!” "You’re a winner!”

“Fake it ‘til you make it!” We want to fit in, to be accepted and approved by others. Our natural instinct is to seek to be admired, honored, and even praised; it is not to be seen as different, and certainly not to earn the label “weird,” or perhaps worse, “irrelevant.”

It takes something radical like dying to make the categorical shift in our pursuits. Jesus said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23, NLT). With our cute cross necklaces, and gilded symbols at church altars or on steeples sometimes I think we lose the original graphic depiction of the excruciating execution that Jesus called to mind for His original audience. To follow Him and love as He loved, we must give up “our own way” — what naturally feels good and right.

We must die to the old ways, our selfish nature, and follow in His footsteps. To genuinely love as He loved, there is no other way.

Is it hard to love as He loved? In His treatise of the Sermon on the Mount in The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard asked this very question.1 He concluded, “It

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is very hard indeed if you have not been substantially transformed in the depths of your being, in the intricacies of your thoughts, feelings, assurances, and dispositions, in such a way that you are permeated with love. Once that happens, then it is not hard.

What would be hard is to act the way you acted before.” Jesus, Willard says, “does not call us to do what He did, but to be as He was, permeated with love. Then the doing of what He did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are in Him.”2 Put another way, abiding in Christ, we produce fruit. As we allow His transformative power to work in us, our focus shifts as we “zoom out” and get an eternal perspective. The things of earth grow strangely dim, as the old song goes. What we seek, we find. What we focus on changes us.

Strangely, though, it is not about trying. It is about surrendering and being transformed from the inside out. John Ortberg puts it this way, “When the heart is well-ordered, we are not only increasingly free from sin, but also increasingly free from the desire to sin … we would love people so much we would not want to deceive or manipulate or envy them. We would be transformed from the inside out.”3 This inner transformation is more akin to training than trying.

In Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ, Willard explains that we can mistakenly hear that love is patient and kind (I Corinthians 13:4), and try hard to be loving by acting patiently and kindly toward others, and experience failure.4 He asserts that we must first make significant progress in “taking love itself — God’s kind of love — into the depths of our being through spiritual formation [which] will, by contrast, enable us to act lovingly to an extent that will be surprising even to ourselves, at first.”5

our offices, with clients in our counseling sessions, or with neighbors leaning across the back fence of our yard, eternal fruit will blossom and flourish. But only from the overflow of the vibrant relationship we have nurtured during the quiet hours spent meditating on His Word, and crying out in surrender for the Holy Spirit to help us to forgive as He has forgiven us, to permeate our hearts with love for the unlovable, to love as He loved.

A story is told of a young man and an older gentleman who each gave a rendition of Psalm 23 before a large audience. The younger man was gifted and trained in speech and drama, and his eloquent oration was met with thunderous applause. The older man, leaning heavily on his cane, recited the psalm with a feeble, shaky voice. When he finished, the crowd was silent, reverent, some in prayer, and some just still. The younger man stood again and quietly explained, “You asked me to come back and repeat the Psalm, but you remained silent when my friend here was seated. The difference? I shall tell you. I know the Psalm, but He knows the Shepherd!”6 May we make it our mission in life to seek the Savior, allowing His love to permeate our lives, and who knows, maybe we’ll hear someone we’ve loved well say to us, “Što te razlikuje? Želim ono što imaš.” What makes you different? I want what you have.

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God, (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997).

1

2

Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, 183.

John Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002).

3

Knowing before Showing

4

Seeking first to show Christ’s love to others may be putting the cart before the horse. Perhaps, as our paths cross with those of students in the classrooms and

5

Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ, (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2002).

Willard, Renovation of the Heart, 24.

Charles Allen, God Psychiatry, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 1953).

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INTERDISCIPLINARY ESSAYS

Penn, Pennsylvania, and a Vision for Leading Interdisciplinary Engagement from Leadership and Social History Jim Fisher, Assistant Professor of Practical Studies, John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University John S. Knox, Associate Professor of Sociology, School of Behavioral Sciences, Liberty University

The mere whisper of “leadership” can cause any range of reactions depending upon the hearer’s presuppositions or personal experiences. Consider the ramifications of being “the boss” versus having “a boss.” As both subject and application, leader(ship) is perpetually being defined and refined, and yet, what does good leadership really look like?

abuse by the government. Of course, as the head proprietor and governor of those holdings in America, Penn had complete authority. Yet, he used this position to procure liberties for the colonists and not just to help himself, politically or financially. In the example of Penn, we see an active pursuit of leadership and the opportunities to lead.

Functionally, leadership conveys guiding others with steady and sure progress to a beneficial end, but not everyone succeeds in this endeavor. Rather than being a helpful guide, some leaders instead become a lead weight focused on their own rights and personal rewards.

In 1 Timothy, we are told that “Whoever desires to be an overseer desires a noble task” (3:1). But then Paul quickly describes what this overseer must look like — the list is long and surely more than we can accomplish by ourselves. As we look to Jesus, we see this list lived perfectly. We also see His active pursuit of people to lead them into reconciliation with the Father.

The history of Western civilization is full of bad leaders. Despots like Nero, Irene of Athens, John I of England, Pope Alexander VI (a Borgia), Ivan the Terrible, Mary Tudor, and so on, come to mind. The nefarious deeds of these leaders flow from a distorted vision of leadership. Clearly, rather than lead from the front, they believed that their followers should lift them up from below.

Yet, just as there are multitudinous examples of despotic leadership, there too are historical examples that image how we can lead while “looking to Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:12). To wit, in 1680, an old debt of King Charles II was passed from the deceased Admiral Penn to his son, William Penn, but in lieu of that money owed to him, young Penn asked to receive instead “proprietary title to a huge territory in America.”1 Showing great foresight and heart, he asked for this alternative because Penn, a Quaker, desired to “create a theocentric society without resorting to compulsion in religious matters.”2 Far from being passive, he was a missional leader, with clear goals and a steadfast spirit, who strived be an essential, tireless, and contributing member in this holy mission.

Thereafter, Penn established this colony with the hope that religious toleration would be maintained without

Similarly, Penn’s eventual plan of government was called the “Frame of Government.”3 It guaranteed “an asylum for those who had suffered persecution for their religious convictions, regardless of faith”4 and established an electoral legislative system, prohibited taxation without representation, and guaranteed free trade. As a leader, Penn committed to more than just organizational procedures, for wise leaders discuss goals with their people — not separated from them.

For instance, as we look to Jesus, He constantly alerted His disciples regarding His plans and mission for the Kingdom of God by healing the hurt, making the blind to see, and making the deaf to hear. Like Jesus, the engaged leader has a plan, but never sees people as interruptions or stepping-stones in his or her schemes.5 Penn’s “Holy Experiment” proved true to its name.

It showed that the two spheres of church and state could coexist in ways that were mutually amicable and beneficial. This experimental form of society could prosper and flourish despite hardships, military struggles, and religious diversity, through determination. The colony in Pennsylvania did more than just succeed; it provided the framework and example for other colonies to follow in America.

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As we look to Jesus for our model, good leaders design professional growth plans and provide a cultivating environment. The privilege of shaping and sharpening others must not be taken for granted. Remember, Jesus sent out the disciples two by two to exercise their spiritual training and gifts after He trained them.

Giving others an opportunity to grow and flourish is an essential piece of what effective leaders do. Leaders accept the call and know that challenges are part of the package. Decision-making mode is always turned “on.”

Leading is a daring thing, being wholly committed to making people’s lives better. Jesus never abandoned His mission nor deviated for personal gain, which was (and still is) an inspiration for those who followed Him. While leadership is never about perfection, it is always about direction.

This inspiration did not just happen on its own; Penn’s leadership was the driving force responsible for the creation of the Pennsylvania colony. Penn’s “great enterprise in the New World was ... an endeavor to set up a social order blessed with religious toleration and controlled by humanitarian ideals.”6 As with Jesus’ model of dealing with the Pharisees and Sadducees, without Penn, few of his followers were courageous enough to establish a social enclave for the cultivation of religious freedoms, fearing years of royal ironfisted control. While Penn often had to resort to diplomacy and politics to preserve his plans, he never compromised his heart for spiritual and religious truth — truly, a testimony on how engaged leadership ensures great accomplishments and benefits for all.

As we look to Jesus for our model, when a person is a good leader, they are highly valued by those around them. This notice is not one-sided, though; good leaders also take notice of their followers. Bad leaders often avoid meaningful interaction because they simply do not know or do not want to know their people, but communication is irreplaceable.

Moreover, a sense of one’s vocational worth and calling are beyond measure — just ask Zacchaeus and all the disciples. Good leaders commit deeply to their people and their cause, knowing it is a blessing and joy and not just a ladder for career promotion.

It is a temporary privilege of public service — not a private benefit. To wit, Jesus’ sacrificial attitude and willingness to help others — as their leader — was dramatically different compared to that of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Speaking of which, based on the profusion of historically bad leaders, the question is often raised, “Can we even know what good leadership looks like?” Of course, when it is experienced first-hand, people certainly know how good leadership feels and how it positively impacts those blessed by its company. Although there are some intuitive aspects to appraising the leadership of others, it also helps to have a model of comparison for evaluations. Joyfully, we can look to Jesus of Nazareth in the Bible and see not just good leadership, but the best of leadership in theory and in action.

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The leadership of Jesus highlights effective and synergistic concepts. In events like the Garden of Gethsemane, He exemplifies faithful submission to the Father. He demonstrates co-laboring with the stumbling saints in philanthropic service to the community, with humble shepherd-patience for the sheep who are often directionless, dumb, dirty, and defenseless. Jesus models how to build relationships, challenge the status quo, handle criticism effectively, honor the government, esteem every human, and confront Satan, sin, and the self-righteous.7 Jesus taught (and continues to teach) His followers how to develop spiritual wellness practices of inward, outward, and corporate disciplines.8 There is so much that can be observed about Jesus’ leadership style from the New Testament — specifically, regarding chief characteristics of good and bad leaders. Yet, from this prose-painted picture by the biblical authors, we see that Jesus was, first and foremost, an engaged leader. Succinctly, engaged leadership is proactively involved in guiding and supporting others toward a clear mission and purpose.

One can see this in the lives of leaders such as Penn, Luther, Spurgeon, and the like. And, as another great American historical figure Jonathan Edwards affirmed, And so, whatever the post of honor or influence we may be placed in, we should show that, in it, we are solicitous for the good of the public, so that the world may be better for our living in it, and that,

when we are gone, it may be said of us, as it was so nobly said of David (Acts 13:36), that we “served our generation by the will of God.”9 Without much dissent, this is a perfect description of anyone who follows the model of Jesus, the leader of all leaders.

Richard Dunn and Mary Maples Dunn, eds., The World of William Penn (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 41.

1

2 Arlin Adams, “William Penn and the American Heritage of Religious Liberty.” The Journal of Law and Religion 8, no. 1 (1990): 520.

3 Adams, 521.

4 William C. Kashatus, “William Penn’s Legacy: Religious and Spiritual Diversity.” Pennyslvania Heritage Magazine 37, no. 2 (Spring 2011): online; retrieved from http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/ pa-heritage/william-penn-legacy-religious-spiritual-diversity.html.

5 David Stevens, Jesus, M.D. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 2001), 147.

6 E. C. O. Beatty, “William Penn, Pragmatist.” Bulletin of Friends Historical Association 29, no. 2 (Autumn 1940): 116.

7 Jay Dennis, The Jesus Habits: Exercising the Spiritual Disciplines (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 2005), V. 8 Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988), 1.

9 Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits: Or, Christian Love as Manifested in the Heart and Life (New York City, NY: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1852), 246.

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INTERDISCIPLINARY ESSAYS

Pursuing God and the Good: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Cultural Engagement through Biblical Ethics and Writing Alex Mason, Instructor of Ethics, College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University Sarah Rice, Instructor of English, College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University

We live in an era of human history marked by widespread literacy and near-instant digital communication. Whereas writing used to be a skill relegated to a select few individuals, the democratization of literacy allows for almost any individual to communicate and engage with culture in written form. So how can Christians communicate truth in a cacophonous world? How do we winsomely engage culture? It can only be done through God’s grace and our carefully practiced obedience to the revealed word of God that has been written down, over and over again, for thousands of years in order to arrive to us in this moment. Ethics are borne on each individual’s heart, but they are sown throughout history in written form. That is God’s design as instituted on Mount Sinai. As the image bearers of God, we continue this practice to propagate truth for a wider cultural audience.

Instructing Culture through Writing: Divine Examples from the Son and the Father The Gospel of Mark recounts the time when the Sadducees unsuccessfully attempted to entrap Jesus in a contradiction about marriage in the Resurrection.

Afterwards, having overheard this exchange, one scribe approached Jesus to ask a simple question: “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

Sensing that this question was a genuine attempt at understanding, Jesus responded plainly: “'[L]ove the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’ … and ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

There is no other commandment greater than these.”

After the scribe humbly affirmed these words, Jesus remarked: “You are not far from the Kingdom of God” (Mark 12:28-34, ESV).

FA I T H A N D T H E A C A D E M Y: E N G A G I N G T H E C U LT U R E W I T H G R A C E A N D T R U T H

In this short periscope, we see our Lord demonstrate a Kingdom-driven model of cultural engagement that proclaims truth using the lens of literature. After all, Jesus’ answer was a distillation of written teachings found in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, both being well-worn passages the scribe would have doubtless recognized. That answer — often summarized as “Love God and love your neighbor” — was such an ingeniously simple gloss of the Torah, but it is the telos of a distinctly Christian ethic as inaugurated by the Son of God. This mandate of the Christian ethic is harvested from the Israelite’s law literature, which itself is rooted in the Decalogue, a set of ten commandments given

by God Himself as the underpinning juridical foundation of Israelite life. God chose to reveal this ethic of obedience and love to the prophet Moses, but it is important to note that He did not rely solely on Moses’ ability to orally recite what He heard on Mount Sinai. Rather, God chose to etch these principles of ethics into solid stone tablets (twice, actually) to preserve them for His people.

We must not overlook the literary character of this act. This is the first recorded instance in Scripture where God writes. Up until that meeting on Sinai, all of God’s communication had been verbal. His act of carving the Ten Commandments into stone was representative of their permanence and finality.

Because those tablets existed before the entire

Pentateuch was written, they must be regarded as the first tangible literary exposition of ethics in Jewish history. In short, the significance of God’s choice to externalize His commands in written language cannot be understated.

For several hundred years after the Law-giving on Sinai, the Israelites housed God’s divine handwriting in a purpose-built golden ark, not only because it was a symbol of their special covenant relationship with God, but also because it served as a written reminder of the expectations for their relationship to God and their fellow man. This largely informed their interactions with other people groups and nations. In a very real way, this written ethic fueled their intracultural engagement and a form of external protoevangelism regarding the one, true God. In contrast, we Christians have a covenant relationship with God wherein the old ceremonies and sacrifices have been abrogated by the substitutionary atonement of Christ. Perfect obedience to the Law has been fulfilled by the sinless life of Jesus, who is our mediator, high priest, and the living Word of God. But the literary character of God’s law still echoes between the covenants. Whereas God once wrote His law on stone tablets, He now writes it on our hearts (cf. Jeremiah 31:33). Even so, this new covenant still makes claims on our relation to both God and fellow man. Indeed, the ancient commandments fit neatly within Jesus’ formula for our public witness — the

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first four commandments instruct and bound our love for God while the last six commandments frame and shape our love for neighbor.

Engaging Culture through Writing: A Contemporary Analysis The question becomes how we, as Christians, can effectively communicate these biblical ethics to a broken world. Because of God’s love and grace, we try to live in accordance with His will, yet this resolution has the potential to separate us from a contemporary culture that often delights in its fallen status. It stands to reason, then, that we must learn to understand culture in order to engage it while remaining steadfast in our call to serve as ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:2). Love is dependent upon this sort of understanding, “[f ]or I cannot love my neighbor unless I understand him and the cultural world he inhabits. Cultural literacy — the ability to understand patterns and products of everyday life — is thus an integral aspect of obeying the law of love.”1 Although we can view culture as a sort of umbrella term, encompassing the broad and varied behaviors, identities, beliefs, and practices of any group of people, author and editor Andy Crouch’s definition is perhaps the most relevant. Simply put, culture is “what human beings make of the world,” and it is most evident through our desire to create.2 As representatives of Christ, we are endowed with different spiritual gifts and imaginative abilities needed to construct cultural artifacts that engage contemporary society while pointing a lost and hurting world to God’s truth. If we believe that culture depends on the creation of such cultural artifacts, the best way to change culture, according to Crouch, is to make more of it.3 We are not called to remove ourselves entirely from the world in order to avoid becoming exposed to sin, nor should we allow popular culture to determine our ethics, values, or worldview. Yet we cannot deny that our world has become increasingly preoccupied with and dependent upon digital communication.

Each day, most of us create and consume an overwhelming amount of digital texts by way of emails, text messages, instant messages, social media, news stories, and online articles. These digital texts are available every hour of every day with few exceptions, allowing us to connect with nearly anyone around the world who has Internet service. If language is “the thing about ourselves and our communities we know best” that serves as “the foundation of our social

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selves,” and written language preserves and conveys a permanent message, it is more important than ever to communicate with one another through deliberate and intentional written texts clearly, efficiently, and, above all, graciously.4 One way we can effectively engage others with the intention of fulfilling the Great Commission is to write about culturally relevant and timely topics with “humanity and warmth.”5 Culture cannot exist without people, and it is our friends, neighbors, family, and coworkers that we must strive to understand and love as we navigate the universal aspects of the human condition together. Being knowledgeable about current events, entertainment, publications, local community issues, church policies, music, parenthood, politics, and so on allows us to pursue our own areas of interest while discovering ways to relate to a larger cultural sphere. We are therefore tasked with the responsibility of working within culture to create more of it, and writing in this digital age provides us with a unique opportunity to show others we understand the difficulties of navigating life’s uncertainties while pointing them to the hope that is found in Christ alone.

The Bible provides us with the unfailing guide to ethical living. Based on God’s example of the importance of the written word established with Moses, brought to life through Jesus’ role as the Word of God, and grounded in the fact that ours is a bookbased religion, we are called to love God and others.

We can do this by engaging culture through writing in a way that expresses God’s Truth. When we understand our neighbors, we are better able to love them and, ultimately, point them to the Savior. Like the scribe in Mark 12, they may not be far from the Kingdom of God.

Kevin Vanhoozer, ed., Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 19.

1

2 Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 60.

3 Ibid., 40.

4 R. W. Bailey, Images of English: A Cultural History of the Language, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1.

5 William Zinsser, William. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. 30th anniversary ed, (New York: Harper Perennial, 2016), 5.

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Book Reviews Jacob Haley Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

Since Christ’s work has extended to all areas, including leadership, the question is not if but how leadership is affected by the cross.

In The Cross and Christian Ministry: Leadership Lessons from 1 Corinthians, D.A. Carson takes up the challenge to answer this question. Combining the insights of a pastor and the keen intellect of a world-renowned scholar, Carson provides his exposition of portions of 1 Corinthians, seeking to show how the cross applies to Christian leadership.

One recurring theme throughout the book is the message of the Christian leader. Carson shows how, to Paul, the cross is both dividing and unifying. The human race is divided into two groups: those with the Spirit that perceive the cross and those without the Spirit who are blinded to the message of the cross. This means that what separates us from the world characterizes us as Christians.

Thus, the Gospel is the message that Christians need to unify around and make as their hub for all other activities. Carson specifically applies the need for unity around the cross to the multicultural world. The Gospel should be the ultimate focus, causing us to “lay down our rights,” to give up secondary, unimportant matters, for the sake of winning people to Christ. A second recurring theme is the work of the Christian leader. The Christian leader’s work should not lead to an exaltation of the leader. Carson applies Paul’s agricultural analogy in 1 Corinthians 3:5-9 to show that each leader is merely a servant of Christ.

Rather, Christian leaders should work humbly, knowing that the mysteries of God were graciously revealed to them by the Spirit. Moreover, Christian leaders’ work should be carried out with diligence, for they will be held accountable for their tasks.

Delivered with brilliant insights and pressed home with poignant application, The Cross and Christian Ministry is truly an elucidating read. One moment Carson is thoroughly examining theological issues, like man’s spiritual blindness, and the next is seamlessly transitioning into insightful principles for today. The Cross and Christian Ministry is also thoroughly biblical, for Carson’s argumentation is founded on solid, compelling exegesis. With pastoral insights, he applies the timeless truths of God’s Word to current key areas for leaders: urging humility, cautioning church fads, touching on being a “world-Christian,” and more. For both those who are considering ministry and wondering what Christian leadership looks like and seasoned ministers who want to center their vocation more closely around the cross, Carson’s exposition will teach, convict, and move you to action.

Carson, D. A. The Cross and Christian Ministry: Leadership Lessons from 1 Corinthians, 2018. $11.99. 160 pp.

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Book Reviews Parker Williams Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

The Cost of Moral Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

by Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson examines the vibrant spiritual life of the German theologian which guided his personal relationships, pastoral ministry, university teaching career, and eventual martyrdom. Drawing from Bonhoeffer’s own writings and those of his closest friends, Kelly and Nelson unpack his deep fellowship with Christ and the Holy Spirit and how he continually sought to know God intimately and lead others to do the same.

Covering the breadth of his educational and ministerial experience, The Cost of Moral Leadership surveys his time as a student and lecturer in prestigious German and American seminaries as well as a pastor in pulpits in Germany, Spain, and England. The most defining moments of his ministry pertain to his leadership in the Confessing Church where he was a prominent figure in the resistance against the Reich Church and the Nazi Party. Kelly and Nelson go to great lengths to dynamically illustrate Bonhoeffer’s internal conflict as he squared his pacifist convictions with the scriptural commands to defend the helpless and oppressed during an unprecedented time of injustice and evil.

He worked tirelessly to counteract the false gospel of the Reich Church and the vile wickedness of Nazism, ultimately deciding to participate in an assassination attempt on Hitler. During his subsequent arrest and imprisonment, Bonhoeffer’s incredible faith and devotion to Christ shine through as he writes letters and poems of exhortation and encouragement right up to the day of his execution.

This book is an excellent read for those seeking a powerful testimony about a modern hero of the faith and how his spiritual devotion carried him through one of the darkest times in history. It provides a powerful testimony of the immeasurable importance of devoted spiritual leadership in the midst of strife and persecution and can serve as a valuable resource for today’s church leaders as they navigate the ethical challenges of this ever changing world. The Cost of Moral Leadership invokes Bonhoeffer’s call to intense discipleship, earnest fellowship, and relentless obedience as the essence of Christian living.

Kelly, Geffrey B., and F. Burton Nelson. The Cost of Moral Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans Pub, 2003. $12.99. 300pp.

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Book Reviews Matthew Searson Student Fellow, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, Liberty University

In Biblical Leadership: Theology for the Everyday Leader, Benjamin K. Forrest and Chet Roden seek to fill a unique void in the otherwise overcrowded leadership genre. In lieu of offering three simple steps or five quick ways to become a better leader, Forrest and Roden — joined by a host of Bible scholars — offer what few other leadership books provide: understanding leadership in light of the whole counsel of God. To help the reader begin building a theology of leadership, the authors leave no book of the Bible unexplored and trace the concept of leadership from Genesis to Revelation. In summary, here are three key leadership convictions held by the authors.

First, the book rightly acknowledges that all human leadership is derived from above. While God has seen fit to appoint mankind as the rulers and subduers of creation, all human authority is merely a byproduct of God’s cosmic rule. As one contributor notes, “All authority given to man is authority that originated in the mind and heart of Yahweh for the good of His people and the glory of His name.”1 Second, the authors firmly hold to the truth that biblical theology and practicality are not antithetical. While the book is primarily biblical and then practical, the reader will find that diving into the original languages (with the immense help of the authors), understanding the Bible’s cultural backgrounds, and doing proper exegesis are all refreshingly practical ways to learn and emulate Christ in servant-leadership. Third, the contributors demonstrate that all leaders, whether serving in formal roles or otherwise, are called to be cognizant of God’s own holiness and to respond appropriately. To assist in building a theological framework of leadership, the authors analyze the lives of countless Biblical figures in order to learn from both their successes and failures. I found that as I read each consecutive chapter, the authors showed me the depth of my own sin as a leader while simultaneously drawing my attention towards Christ, the true and perfect leader.

These three convictions are just a few of many reasons why Biblical Leadership: Theology for the Everyday Leader stands apart from other leadership books of its kind. If you find yourself in a leadership position in any capacity, the contributors make a strong case for why looking to the Bible for guidance is invaluable. As a unique and refreshing view of leadership in the Bible, this book is sure to be edifying and empowering to the aspiring leader.

1

Dickson Ngama and Mark Allen, Benjamin K Forrest and Chet Roden, eds., Biblical Leadership: Theology for the Everyday Leader (Kregel Academic, 2017), 253.

Forrest, Benjamin K, and Chet Roden, eds. Biblical Leadership: Theology for the Everyday Leader. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2017. $36.14. 512 pp.

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Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement Editorial BOard Shawn Akers Mark D. Allen Gabriel B. Etzel Keith Faulkner Benjamin K. Forrest Chris Gnanakan Edward Hindson Gary Isaacs Linda Mintle Gary Sibcy Samuel C. Smith

“Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.

Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.”

Philippians 2:5-7

Coming SPRING 2021 Vol. 6, no. 1 Faith and the Academy: Engaging Culture with Grace and Truth “Inhabiting the City of Man, Being the City of God”