Courage to Lead

Across time and generations, the church has been a part of the ever-changing landscape filled with hopes, challenges, dreams and obstacles. People of faith have been called upon to respond to social and political crises, with the members of the church being disparate in their views and opinions on any given issue. Interpretations of scripture are impacted by experience and there, too, is a range of ways that the church finds itself wrestling with what it means to identify the sacred texts as an integral part of the faith journey. The faith journey holds no easy answers in the commitment to love God and love neighbor as Jesus commanded.

Researchers have identified 45,000 Christian denominations around the world, with Christians accounting for 31 percent of the world’s population. Christians in the United States are a much larger percentage of the population at 62 percent, with over 200 denominations accounted for. The ecumenical community continues to whisper “unity does not mean uniformity” at a time when the differences in the church continue to threaten the commitments to the unity of the church. The challenges of diversity are at every level of the manifestation of the body of Christ – local and global – from the pews to the denominations that exist.

The church is not monolithic. The ability to witness the possibility of Jesus’ prayer “that they may all be one” will require transcending the diversity that is present in the church and in the world. Diversity is the church’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Confronted with the diversity in the church, the inclination is to take sides, to find the sameness and hold that as the value for being together. Where differences are glaring, the tensions mount, conversation is stilted or absent, and some choose to leave for places where others look like them, think the same, and where values are perceived to be similar. The attraction to others who are the same restricts the ability to learn from others whose thought and ideas may be different.

The desire for justice is the one of the places where opinions grate and the living of the gospel becomes divergent. The pursuit of justice requires the courage to lead in the church and in communities where diversity is present. Courageous leadership is needed in the pulpit witness, in the public square, and across the opinions that are often incongruous. It will take courageous witness to be prophetic across the political chasm, to span the theological divide and to participate in building community from the mosaic of diversity among us. Courage to lead pushes beyond the comfort zones of sameness and allows for seeing the other beyond the differences that separate.

Courage is needed to take us across the divides that suggest others are not to be loved, accepted, welcomed among us. Courage is needed to be prophetic in times when the church and the gospel are being co-opted to support messages of hate and fear. Courage will lead us to the halls of justice to speak out against the injustices of this day. And it will require courage to confront and overcome the Empire and tyranny manifesting in this age. The choice to lead demands the courage for the living of these days.

Those who came before exercised courage that opened doors, demolished walls, and destroyed barriers. At a time when diversity is being decried as a problem, when the divides seem to be widening between people of faith, the courage to live love and the possibility of unity is needed. Courageous leaders are today’s prophets bringing with them word, vision and mission for the way forward.