Picture a leader and perhaps you see a figure standing at the front of a group. The leader leads, the followers, follow, right? But a leader, too far ahead, can lose touch. Positioned behind the group, the leader could be overlooked. The proper place for the leader is in the midst of the group, drawing in the outliers, listening, encouraging, working together, and looking very much like every other member of the team.
We are going to spend some time over the next several weeks, until the first of the year, thinking and talking together about leadership.
For a congregation who is about to begin the task of choosing your next settled minister, it’s good for us all to think about what kind of leader we think we need.
What makes a good leader? What makes a good leader for this particular congregation? How does a leader lead, responsibly, ethically, competently, effectively?
Leadership is one of the five tasks for a congregation to work on during the interim period between one settled ministry and the next.
That interim work doesn’t apply just to the leadership of the minister you will be calling, but also the broader leadership of the congregation. Lay leadership also needs attention during an interim. Lay leadership often gets shuffled as one ministry ends and another gets set to begin. Previous lay leaders may be ready to step down. New leaders may need to emerge who can guide the congregation into the new incarnation of the church that will appear under the new ministry.
But leadership is an issue for more of our lives than just our church. So think of this discussion of leadership as a spiritual lesson and challenge, whatever your situation. Leadership issues come up in every part of our lives. We are everywhere surrounded by leaders: choosing leaders, following leaders, leading others, being asked to lead others. We lead and are lead in every relationship: our colleagues at work, our families, our clubs and teams, our nation, our city, our school.
Last week I spoke about what I see as the primary responsibility of good leadership, which is to attend to the health of the community.
Today, I want to talk about a related issue of leadership, which is the issue of where the leader positions themselves in relationship to their community: out front, behind, to the side, or in the midst.
Our Call to Worship this morning was a Psalm that you are probably familiar with. It’s usually associated with memorial services, but it is, in essence, a meditation on leadership.
“The lord is my shepherd.”
The metaphor of the leader as the shepherd and the flock as the community is a common one in the Bible. It is an example that would have been familiar to the people who wrote the Bible. But it is probably less familiar to us today.
How did a shepherd lead?
The culture of the time included both farming and tending livestock.
The farmwork was labor intensive. Farmwork required the strongest bodies and daily heavy work. Typically, the adults and the eldest children did the work on the farm.
Sheepherding was hard, too, but not so physically hard, and often came with times when there was little to do but keep watch, so the shepherd job was traditionally given to the youngest son.
During the spring there might be sufficient forage close to the village. So the shepherd and the flock could return home every evening. As the year progressed the grasses would disappear close by and the shepherds would need to move their flocks farther and farther from the village.
The job of the shepherd was to lead the flock to the places where the sheep could find the food and water they needed, and to keep the flock together, so no sheep would be lost, and to keep the flock safe from predators.
You can hear how that’s a good metaphor for all kinds of leadership. Guiding toward goals. Helping the community access what they need to sustain themselves. Holding the community together, because every individual is valuable. Defending the community against outside threats.
To do this work, the shepherd was equipped with several tools.
The Psalm mentions the rod and the staff.
The staff was a long pole usually with a cook on the end. The shepherd could reach out with the staff to physically push or use the crook to pull a sheep in the direction the shepherd wanted the animal to go.
The rod was a short stick. You’ve probably heard another Bible verse quoted as, “spare the rod and spoil the child.” The actual Bible verse is, “Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them” (Proverbs 13:24). Sometimes enforcing discipline in the community is part of a leader’s duties. But the shepherd’s rod was not primarily for use on the sheep but to use as a weapon against predators.
So you can see that the shepherd’s rod and staff would be comforting to the community, symbols of gentle guidance and of protection from danger.
The shepherd had a third tool that isn’t mentioned in the Psalm but you know about from a different Bible story, the story of David and Goliath. Shepherd’s had slings.
A staff was helpful if the sheep that needs attention is close at hand. A rod is helpful if the predator is right in front of you. But a flock of sheep is quite a bit larger than a shepherd can reach with an outstretched hand. So how would a shepherd guide and protect the sheep far away?
A shepherd would get skilled at slinging stones.
Sitting on the side of a hill, or standing in the midst of the flock, a shepherd could see, if, on the fringe of the flock, a sheep was starting to wonder off. The shepherd could pick up a stone from the ground and throw it, or fling it with his sling to land near the wayward sheep. The sudden sound of the stone hitting the ground would startle the sheep, the sheep would turn away from the sound, and thus, from a distance, the shepherd could guide the sheep where the shepherd wanted the animal to go.
If the sheep at the front of the flock are starting to turn left, and the shepherd knows that the good pasture and water are to the right, the shepherd could load a stone into his sling, fling the stone out to the front of the flock, carefully aimed to land just to the left of the lead sheep. The sheep would startle and turn to the right, and the sheep behind would follow along in the desired direction.
If a sheep or two at the back of the flock were straggling and in danger of being left behind, the shepherd could grab a stone, sling it out back beyond the dawdling sheep, and give the animals the encouragement they needed to leap forward and rejoin the rest of the herd.
You’ve seen Michelangelo’s statue of David with his sling, slung over his shoulder. David was the youngest son of his family, Jesse’s family, so David was the shepherd. Called to fight the Philistine giant, Goliath, David rejected the armor and the sword that he was offered. “I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul [the king], “because I am not used to them.” (First Samuel 17:39). Instead, David chose the tool that he knew how to use from his shepherd work, his sling, and “five smooth stones” that he gathered from the riverbed.
Goliath, tall and strong, suited with armor and armed with a sword, laughed at this nearly naked, young boy rushing at him. But as David, “ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him” (First Samuel 17:48), David reached into his bag, drew out a stone, loaded his sling and fired the stone at the giant. The stone hit the giant in the forehead. Before David was even close enough for Goliath to use his size and sword, the giant fell, and David won.
What’s the proper place for a leader to position themselves in their community?
Well, if you’re a giant, eager for a fight, perhaps the best place is out front of your community, all alone, protected by your size and strength and armor and sword. But Goliath was a warrior, not a leader. Goliath paid no attention to the Philistine’s gathered behind him. He wasn’t working on the primary task of a leader, tending to the health of the community. He focused on a task they wanted done. He focused on defeating the Philistine’s enemy. He was fighting for the community but he wasn’t leading them.
David, too, at the battle line, fought all alone. In this case he wasn’t a leader, either. But in his regular work, shepherding, he was a leader. And he would be a leader again when he was selected to be king.
And from his shepherding, David would know that the proper place for a leader is not out in front of the community, but in the midst of the community.
Positioned at the front of the herd, staring ahead, he might think he was leading the flock toward the good pasture, but the shepherd would have no knowledge of the sheep falling behind at the back, getting lost. In direct touch with only the dozen or so sheep close near him at the front, the shepherd wouldn’t know that the other hundred sheep had turned away and were wandering aimlessly one valley over and beset by predators.
Positioned at the back, the shepherd could tend to the stragglers, pick up the weakest lamb and carry it on his shoulders. But if the shepherd looked far to the front of the herd and saw the lead sheep turning to the left instead of the right, even a shepherd as skilled with a sling as David was would have no way to signal to the front sheep that they were headed in the wrong direction. And if they turned toward a cliff, or toward the jaws of a hungry lion, several sheep would be lost before the shepherd could come to their aid.
The place for a shepherd is the middle of the flock, closely monitoring the front and the back, and the sheep to the farthest either side. Close enough to be helpful to the needs of both the strong and enthusiastic at the front, and the weak and reluctant at the back.
To get every member to the goal the shepherd needs to sling an occasional stone to tell the ones behind, “come on!” and the ones out ahead, “wait up!”
David Brooks had an editorial in this week’s New York Times offering some comfort to democrats who might have been despairing over the previous week’s poll which had showed Trump with a clear lead in the presidential race in several swing stakes, but could this week take some heartening lessons from election returns in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky.
David Brooks made four observations about American politics. One, he said, is to remember the difference between polls and elections. Americans use polls to vent their spleen, he said, but Americans know that a vote has real consequences, and history shows they will be more thoughtful with their vote at the ballot box then they are on the phone with a pollster.
And he reminded us that the election that counts is a year away and polls have limited value when there are so many variables to pass through between now and then.
But then he made two other observations that I thought bolstered my argument that the most effective community leaders are the ones who stand in the midst of their community, neither too far ahead or behind.
Brooks said, “The median voter rule still applies. The median voter rule says parties win when they stay close to the center of the electorate. It’s one of the most boring rules in all of politics, and sometimes people on the left and the right pretend they can ignore it, but they usually end up paying a price.”
Ask, of your own style of leadership, or of the leader you want for your community, “Do you want to be the shepherd just of the dozen sheep at the front of the herd, or just the dozen sheep at the back of the herd, or is the shepherd’s responsibility to be the shepherd of all the herd: front, back, middle, left and right?
For the hymn we sang at the start of this morning’s service, the answer is clear:
“We sing of community now in the making
in every far continent, region, and land;
with those of all races, all times and names and places,
we pledge ourselves in covenant firmly to stand.”
In religion, there is a name for the kind of person who stands at the front, showing the way, and with energy and vision, provokes the true believers to come along. That’s called a prophet. It’s a legitimate, valuable role in religion. Many of the religious ancestors we most admire were prophets. But sometimes the prophet is a lonely figure without a community. Or if they have a community, they cannot keep it.
And, in religion, there is a name for the kind of person who stands at the back of a community, caring for the community’s most vulnerable, tending to the slow, the hesitant, the fearful, offering ministries of healing, compassion, and support. That’s called chaplaincy. That too, is a legitimate, valuable role in religion.
Our faith needs chaplains. And we need prophets. One of the reasons that our Unitarian Universalist faith is experiencing a parish minister shortage right now is that many of our newest ministers are choosing those specialized ministries. Rather than choosing congregational ministry, they are choosing to work in hospital or prison settings as chaplains offering a ministry of healing, or choosing to work on behalf of particular causes often in a non-profit setting, offering a ministry of what we would broadly call justice work.
Some ministers with a personal chaplain-style or prophet-style can also be successful in congregational settings. But there is a third kind of religious leader called, a “pastor.” Pastor, related to pastoral, having to do with the life of a shepherd. Pasture, meaning the place where livestock are led to eat. From the proto-indo-european root, “pa” as a place to feed or eat, like our English word “pantry” or the thing to eat, “pan” in many languages: bread.
The pastor feeds the whole flock the basic stuff that we all need to survive. Le Pain Quotidian. The daily bread. Not the special needs ministry of the chaplain or the prophet, but the daily, dull, core ministry of moving the herd, and the herd all together, to the next place of grass and water, without falling off a cliff or into the mouth of a lion along the way.
David Brooks’ fourth lesson of comfort for fretting Democrats is related to that. He writes, “Dull but effective government can win, and circus politics is failing…. That culture war strategy may get you hits on right-wing media, but it has flopped for Ron DeSantis, flopped for Vivek Ramaswamy, and it flopped Tuesday night on the ballot. Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, did so well in Kentucky in part because he stayed close to the practicalities, focusing on boring old governance issues like jobs, health care costs and investment in infrastructure.”
Boring old basic needs of the community: grass, water, bread, jobs, healthcare, sermons that address the life of the community, greeting visitors after worship, staff supervision during the week, monthly meetings of the finance committee. Dull but effective ministry.
A leader needs a staff to reach out and prod or pull when someone needs a little direction. A rod to fend off outside threats. And a bag of smooth stones to sling to the edges of the community to startle a straying member. Not to punish the stray. And certainly not to push them further away, but to coax them to turn back to the community, to turn inward, to turn from whatever edge they have drifted to, back to the center of the community.