Chapter 3 From Leading to Being Led

The mystery is this: leadership, for a large part, means being led. --pg 75

And why? Because the third temptation was the temptation of power.

Again, the Devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. And he said to Him, “I will give You all these things if You will fall down and worship me.”

Then Jesus told him, “Go away, Satan! For it is written: Worship the Lord your God, and serve only Him.”

Then the Devil left Him, and immediately angels came and began to serve Him.

--Matthew 4:8-11

Q: What is the greatest leadership irony in the Christian faith?

A: In its history Christianity leaders have succumbed to the temptation of power … political, military, economic, moral and spiritual. -- see pg 76

The very thing Jesus emptied Himself of on the cross.

Q: What makes the temptation of power so attractive and strangely irresistible?

A: Maybe that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God.

--pg 77

Q: To Nouwen what one thing is crystal clear?

A: The temptation of power is greatest when intimacy is a threat . --pg 79

Much Christian leadership is exercised by individuals who do not know how to develop healthy intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empirebuilders have been those unable to give and receive love. --pg 79

Jesus has a different vision of maturity: it is the ability and willingness to be led where you would rather not go.

--pg 81

“ I assure you: When you were young, you would tie your belt and walk wherever you wanted. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will tie you and carry you where you don’t want to go.”

--John 21:18

As a leader where will you be led?

Where are you willing to go?

Leadership must constantly be abandoned in favor of love. –pg 82

To lead is to be a servant first.

The Christian leader of the future needs to be radically poor, journeying with nothing except a staff —

He instructed them to take nothing for the road except a walking stick: no bread, no traveling bag, no money in their belts. --Mark 6:8 --pg 84

Christian leadership seems to have nothing to do with charisma, events, church size or attendance.

What makes the real difference over time is a life lived consistently for Christ so that those of us who wander, being the prodigals that we are, have a place to return to and individuals residing there who demonstrate the hope of Jesus Christ by living it out in real time in “fear and trembling.”

If there is any hope for the church [in the future] it will be hope for a poor church in which its leaders are willing to be led. --pg 84

Note: it would appear that Pope Francis is attempting to address this very issue of leadership 26 years after Henri’s book was published.