“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). (Matthew 1:23 ESV)
The year 2020 has been, for many people, the worst year of their lives. Part of the reason for this is that the Covid-19 pandemic is not just an abstract current event happening in a remote part of the world – it is present everywhere and has touched almost everyone. As one Scottish journalist quipped, “the year 2020 has been full of entirely new experiences: lockdowns, social distancing, toilet paper panic buying, quarantines, and Zoom funerals!” If anything, the year has been exceptionally difficult for government, business, and organizational leaders, not to mention health-care workers. They have had to adapt to keep up with the changing demands arising from the crisis.
Budget cuts, layoffs, the decision to lockdown or rely on herd immunity, changes in ministry implementation strategies – are only a few conundrums that face current leaders. Some have relied on their intuition to navigate these uncharted waters; others have drawn inspiration and wisdom from past crises. In the final analysis, however, the programs and policies implemented to mitigate the challenges have met with varying degrees of success.
At the same time, the crisis has also put a spotlight on a different kind of leaders. These are leaders who have not been afraid to recognize their powerlessness in the face of this crisis. They depend on the presence of God rather than rely on their intuition and past successes. They believe that the assurance of the presence of God in their leadership is a significant motivational factor for courageous leadership in times of crisis. Like Moses, they refuse to settle for an angel as an escort and instead call for the manifest presence of God in their leadership: “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here” (Ex. 33:15). Like Moses, they understand that without the presence of God, they are left to fend for themselves and as a result, bound to fail and experience humiliation. Like Moses, they embrace the reality of God as “Immanuel.”
This group of leaders recognizes that their capabilities, while important, are futile in the face of uncertainty – unless God is with them. From their perspective, the presence of God is a sure and solid foundation on which they can stand – not their methods, strategies, or resources. The presence of God gives hope and thus, enables them to press on. With God, they have learned, challenges become less of an obstacle and more of an opportunity for God to display his power: “For by you I can run against a troop, and by my God, I can leap over a wall” (Psalm 18:29).
What such leaders dread the most is to hear “Ichabod!” said about their leadership.
Unfortunately, methods, strategies, resources, intuition, and past successes have taken precedence in Christian leadership at the expense of what is ultimate: the presence of God. Unlike Moses, many Christian leaders seek less the presence of God and more of the above. They forget that “God’s enabling presence is the essential ingredient of successful leadership” (Clinton 2012, 204).[1]
There is thus a need to reclaim the ultimate place of the presence of God in our leadership.
This is the message brought by this pandemic (one need only regard how obsolete our methods and strategies have been!). It is also the message of Christmas 2020: Immanuel (God with us), even in times of crisis.
Notes:
[1] Clinton, J. Robert. 2012. The Making of A Leader: Recognizing the Lessons and Stages of Leadership Development. 2nd Edition. Colorado Springs: NavPress.
Artwork:
JESUS MAFA. The birth of Jesus with shepherds, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48387 [retrieved December 7, 2020]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).
