Plenary, 10 Sep 2008
Meeting date: Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Official Report
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Time for Reflection
Good afternoon. As always on a Wednesday, the first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader is the Reverend Dave Richards of St Paul's and St George's church here in Edinburgh.
The Rev Dave Richards (St Paul’s and St George’s Church, Edinburgh):
What makes a good leader? Is it their charisma? Is it their character? Is it their energy or their experience? Is it their relative youth or their relative old age? Is it the change they promise or their past experience?
If you study leadership in books or at conferences, you will learn much. However, I have learned most by actually leading something—a church in the centre of Edinburgh—and have found that leadership is not easy.
It is not easy primarily because of leaders themselves. Leaders are not perfect; they make mistakes. If you look at leaders in the Bible, nearly all of them are flawed characters who at different times steal, lie, have affairs, murder, cheat, gossip or even refuse to lead. Yet God still uses them and asks them to lead.
Leadership is difficult because, to be a leader, you have to have followers. Leadership would be so much easier if you did not have to lead anyone, but that sort of misses the point. The ultimate test of leadership is this: is anyone following? I think that leadership, therefore, is harder in the United Kingdom—and possibly in Scotland—than it is in the United States of America. We are more cynical, less trusting and more critical and, although all of that can have its advantages, it does make us more difficult to lead.
Leadership is difficult because everyone thinks that they can do it—until they are asked to. The best leaders actually thrive in adversity; they are energised by problems, motivated when faced with difficulty or opposition and galvanised to action when things seem at their bleakest.
The Christian perspective on leadership is unique. Jesus knew the secret of leadership; he taught it but, what is more important, he did it. Jesus taught and modelled a way of leading that was revolutionary. He said that you do not lead through status or authority, through power or position. You lead through one thing: service.
That is what the word "minister", either in church or in government, means: it means "servants" or, literally, "slaves". It does not mean that we do as we are told; it means that we should lead primarily through serving. It does not mean we always do what people want; it means that we lead through serving them.
The symbol of the leadership style of Jesus was not an entourage or a security detail. It was not a motorcade or official residence. Instead, it was a bowl and a towel; the night before he died, he washed the feet of his followers and told them to go and do likewise.
You are our leaders and are therefore our servants. You will lead us best when you serve us, not always doing what we want or doing as you are told, but doing what is right.