A Sermon by the Reverend Ellen Rowse Spero
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church,
Chelmsford, Massachusetts
January 18, 2004
Ancient Reading: Chapter 30 of the Tao-te-Ching by Lao-tzu (Stephen Mitchell, trans., New York: HarperCollins, 1988)
Modern Reading: Excerpt from Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer, pp. 74 and 75 (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000).
Copyright 2004, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
"Leadership" is a concept we often resist. It seems immodest, even self-aggrandizing, to think of ourselves as leaders. But if it is true that we are made for community, then leadership is everyone’s vocation, and it can be an evasion to insist that it is not. When we live in the close-knit ecosystem called community, everyone follows and everyone leads.
Even I—a person unfit to be president of anything, who once galloped away from institutions on a high horse—have come to understand that for better or for worse, I lead by word and deed simply because I am here doing what I do. If you are also here, doing what you do, then you also exercise leadership of some sort…
The power for authentic leadership…is found not in external arrangements but in the human heart. Authentic leaders in every setting—from families to nation-states—aim at liberating the heart, their own and others’, so that is powers can liberate the world.
Our fifth principle states that we covenant to affirm and promote the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large. We govern through congregational polity. This means that ultimate authority for making decisions about the life and purpose of the congregation lies with its members. Therefore, an understanding of leadership: what it is, how it works, what healthy leadership looks like, what unhealthy leadership looks like, is crucial if our congregations are to be healthy communities. The reading I shared by Parker Palmer maintains that all of us are made for community and that if is true, then everyone is a leader and follower. Depending on our gifts and time and energy, we take turns in leading and following. There are times for us to step back and let others lead and there are times for us to step up and take the leadership positions.
What is a leader? Lao-tzu and Parker Palmer, thousands of years apart, point to the same characteristic. The great leaders remembered and revered through history are not those who have sought power or controlled lives, but those who have tried to liberate and empower people. They have challenged the forces of dehumanization. When I think of great leaders, I think of Jesus and the Buddha. I think of Gandhi and Dr. King. I think of Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa. I think of Vaclav Havel and Nelson Mandela. These people did not lead by taking control. They saw leadership as a form of service or servanthood. To be a leader means to be willing to serve and sometimes even to sacrifice for the people whom are you are charged to lead.
Last October, Carole Russell gave me a book called "The Servant: A Simple Story about the True Essence of Leadership" by James Hunter. Hunter shares what he learns of leadership after spending a week in a Benedictine monastery. This is the definition offered Mr. Hunter by Brother Simeon, a former business whiz turned Benedictine monk: "Leadership is the skill of influencing people to work enthusiastically toward goals identified as being for the common good (p. 28). Leadership begins with a question: What do we need as a community? And what do the individuals who are in our community, those we claim as our neighbors, what do they need? Not what do we want, but what do we need? What are the basic needs that must be met in order for us to live? What needs have to be met for us to have a fair and just and equitable community, within our church and beyond it?
We begin with that question and that helps us set the goals. If these are the needs, then these are the goals. Then the next question is how do we meet these goals? And how do we get everyone working together enthusiastically to meet these goals? It is not the job of the leader to fix everything for everyone or to take control but to create the environment or the conditions for the goals to be met.
While one responsibility of a leader is to help the community accomplish the tasks needed to meet their goals, the other is the building of trust. For there to be a healthy community, there has to be a sense of trust. This is why leadership is a form of service. In order to build trust, you have to be willing to share and give of yourself. And you have to take risks. As Lao-tzu and Palmer note, trust in a leader begins with their authenticity or integrity: "Because he believes in himself, he doesn’t try to convince others. Because he is content with himself, he doesn’t need others’ approval. Because he accepts himself, the whole world accepts him." A leader does not change or flit with the demands and wants that surround him or her. At the same time, a leader listens to the stories of those in his or her community and is responsive to their needs.
In order for me to be a good minister and a spiritual leader especially, I have to be clear about who I am and about what grounds me, the sources of my faith. I have to be comfortable with who I am and be in touch with my heart. At the same time, I have to be flexible, willing and able to listen to the differences of opinions and experiences in this congregation, to hold the beliefs and experiences and needs which may be different than mine. I need to hang onto my own identity and at the same time, affirm the identity of all of you. It is a balancing act. If I get too much into my own stuff, I become rigid and inflexible. I am trying to control things. But if I try to please everyone or fix everything, I lose my authority as a leader because I am not there anymore. I am not holding the whole community. I am holding individuals one at a time and then dropping them as the next one comes along. I cannot trust or be trusted.
So, authentic or healthy leadership begins with the inner work of the heart and the spirit. Spirituality is that inner awareness, or knowledge of our light and shadow, of our connections to that which is larger than ourselves, our sources of ultimate meaning. According to Palmer, we project that inner work out into the world in how we lead. We all wrestle with light and shadow within ourselves, and so we need to be aware of how we project our inner heart or spirit. We project shadow when we lead from a place of insecurity about our own identity or self worth. We use leadership to control others to fit our image. We project shadow when we believe that the world is a hostile battleground where we must compete for the limited resources, where every interaction is framed as having winners and losers. We project shadow when we believe that we are totally in control, that we can fix everything, that we are God. We project shadow when we deny death, a refusal to accept that our time and our work is limited, and part of that shadow is fear of failure. All of these shadows are grounded in fear: the fear of the natural chaos, conflict, and change that are part of life.
We project light when we are comfortable with who we are, knowing our strengths and limitations and working with them. We project light when we recognize that the world need not be a battleground, and we work together to share what we have. We project light when we understand that we are not God. We cannot fix everything or make everyone happy. Rather, our role is to create a healthy environment for people to grow, to empower others. We project light when we understand our limitations, and accept our mortality and our failures. We project light when we work out of place of love.
If service and trust are essential elements of leadership, then love is at the heart of it. I talk about love a lot and I imagine that some of you wonder what I mean by that. I am not talking about love as a feeling: the warm fuzzies, where everyone thinks everyone else is just wonderful and all that touchy feely stuff. When I talk about love in the context of religious and spiritual community, I am talking about how we behave rather than how we feel. To love your neighbor as yourself is a call for right behavior and relationship, not right feeling. If you want to be clothed, to be housed, to be fed, to be respected, to be treated as a human being, then to love your neighbor as yourself is to create the conditions for these to exist for others. Love is our first principle, affirming the inherent worth and dignity of every person. It is also our last principle, affirming the interdependent web of which we are all a part, and to behave in ways which make these principles a reality. It doesn’t matter whether they are actually the reality. We behave as if they are. This is how leaders function. Building trust by loving those whom they serve.
So, this is why I emphasize the connection between the "inner work", exploring our spirituality, our faith, our values and beliefs, and the "outer work": participating in the life of this community through volunteering in ways large and small, through pledging and financial commitment, through attending regularly worship and being here. Last week, I talked about Small Group Ministry as a tool for doing this. At the beginning of the year, I asked you to think about what values and ways of being and living you wanted this community to embody. These are the themes of your answers: the desire for a safe place to discuss difficult issues; an inclusive community; a community of support; a place to be reminded of hope and joy; a community striving for peace, justice, and love; a community to make meaningful and meaning of our lives, to grow ourselves and to raise our children.
I am not the only leader in this church. I am the professional leader, primarily responsible for worship and for helping this community maintain its spiritual life. I am primarily responsible for helping the congregation provide pastoral care. I am primarily responsible for helping the leaders lead. Sadie, as the DRE, has similar responsibilities within the RE program, especially tasked to do this for the children and youth. Cyndi has these responsibilities around the music program. But all of us work in partnership with you. We work with various committees and groups in the church to identify and meet the needs of the congregation. To influence all of us to work enthusiastically that we have identified to be goals for our common good, our mission if you will.
But our congregational polity reflects the truth put forth by Parker Palmer: if we are made for community, then all of us are followers and all of us are leaders. When it comes to finances and budgeting, governance and policy, teaching our children and mentoring our youth, membership and program development, social action and outreach, when it comes to the health and life and purpose of this community, you, my dears, are primarily responsible, you are the leaders.
There is a tendency for us to be suspicious of leadership, to see it as a chore, a hardship. But I can tell you there is a great joy in leadership. The rewards are immense. It is a privilege to serve this community and this faith. I look at a world where people, in religious and secular institutions alike, lead through power and control and fear. I am proud of who we are and what we stand for and how we envision leadership. I think it is imperative that we continue this, that we offer an alternative model. I ran into this quotation by a Universalist named George Olinda, that I had been quoting without knowing that I was actually doing so. I guess that having been raised Unitarian Universalist, the message sank in. He says that our faith trusts that the power of love is the stronger force for good than the power of fear. This is it. This is the summary of who we are. We can believe that the source of love is God, or nature, or the Goddess or humanity. But whatever our belief, it is the faith that its power for good is greater than the power of fear that guides us. As we remember Dr. King on his 75th birthday, and his leadership which stands as a testament to the power of love to lead, may we be reminded also that we, as individuals and a community lead by word and deed simply because we are here doing what we do. May we do so out of the core of our faith and tradition: love to liberate the heart and the world.