{"id":33151,"date":"2023-11-30T08:09:35","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T16:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=33151"},"modified":"2023-10-02T08:24:43","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T15:24:43","slug":"33151-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/33151-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Antidote to Anxious, Ambitious Imitation of the Powers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Young, Ambitious, and Anxious\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

My first few years of serving in local church ministry was at an \u201cinfluential megachurch.\u201d This was a big deal for me. I was eager to have my \u201cbig break\u201d and become a successful leader within this institution. But I was not the only one with such ambitions. In fact, when I look back on those years, the underlying ethos of the church staff was ambition entangled with an insidious, pervasive anxiety. There was the desire to be noticed by the senior pastor, gain favor, and be in the inner circle with those who also had favor \u2013 the other influential leaders of the church. I was not immune to this. I wanted to imitate the senior pastor and anyone who was within the inner circle. Little did I know the culture of this church would cause immense harm to my soul. The toxicity went undetected. After reading J.R. Woodward\u2019s The Scandal of Leadership[1]<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, I am finally able to recognize and name this ethos while setting my mind to leading in a different way.<\/p>\n

For this post, I will summarize the main ideas of Woodward\u2019s book, reflect on an insidious power that needs to be unmasked in our culture (a power this church I was at was not immune to and, in actuality, perpetuated), and conclude with ideas on how-to live-in resistance to this power.<\/p>\n

The Scandal of Leadership<\/strong><\/p>\n

In The Scandal of Leadership<\/em> Woodward pulls back the curtain to reveal why the issue of domineering leadership in the church exists. Woodward contends domineering leadership is the result of leaders imitating the powers rather than imitating Christ.[2]<\/a> To make his argument, Woodward converges three interlocutors: Walter Wink, Ren\u00e9 Girard, and William Stringfellow.\u00a0 He provides a theological foundation for this by looking at the powers and principalities with the help of Wink, a framework for imitation (mimetic desire) with Girard, and resistance to the powers with Stringfellow.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

In reflecting on this book, I realized that the culture staff culture I was a part of was mimicking the idolatry of the broader culture, not resisting the Powers that influenced the broader culture while mimicking Christ. What is the cultural idolatry that created an ambitious and anxious staff? To this we shall turn.<\/p>\n

Identity Dislodged and Relocated<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our Western, secular world inhabits a reality in which the \u201cself\u201d is dislodged from pre-modern connection to family, land, and religious\/political institutions (church and sovereignty). Self is re-lodged in the \u201cmarket\u201d and \u201cself-expression.\u201d[4]<\/a> Woodward writes, \u201cInstead of our status primarily being ascribed according to our birth and family lineage, it has become more dynamic, primarily determined in direct proportion to our achievements, largely in the financial realm.\u201d[5]<\/a> The result: a pervasive anxiety. The pressure to reach one\u2019s fullest potential, whether that be with health, finance, spirituality, etc., and reach the highest possible status within one\u2019s aspiring group is immense pressure. To form one\u2019s sense of self-worth and identity around status is cause for anxiety. Status climbing, I would argue, is an idol of our culture. Behind this idol is a Power that once named and unmasked, needs to be engaged with. But how?<\/p>\n

A Remedy According to Paul\u2019s Letter to the Philippians<\/strong><\/p>\n

Woodward provides the book of Philippians as a letter by which followers of Jesus are invited into a new way of being human that does not involve the building up of one\u2019s status.[6]<\/a> In this letter, Paul calls for church leaders (Euodia and Syntyche) to lay down their rivalry (Philippians 4:2-3), and provides the ultimate example of self-emptying leadership: Jesus Christ (2:5-11). When we as followers of Jesus find our identities in being a part of the family of God (instead of pre-modernism\u2019s finding identity in one\u2019s biological family or modernism\u2019s finding identity in one\u2019s status climbing), and imitate Jesus who gave the example of self-emptying, we are able to be the kind of leaders we are meant to be. Not selfishly ambitious and anxious leaders who imitate the wrong examples and thus imitate the Powers. Rather, we live out the example of Christ non-anxiously in this world with Kingdom ambition as opposed to selfish ambition. This is made possible by our identity being securely fasted to God\u2019s love, imitating Jesus’ example in the wilderness as he resisted temptations for money, power, and false ideology.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> J.R. Woodward, The Scandal of Leadership: Unmasking the Powers of Domination in the Church<\/em> (Cody, WY: 100 Movements Publishing Academic, n.d., 2023).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid. xxxv, 290.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid. 290-292.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> See Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment<\/em>, First edition (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), 164-165; \u00a0Karl Polanyi,\u00a0The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time<\/em>, 2nd Beacon Paperback ed (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001); and Jason Paul Clark, \u201cEvangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogeneses in the Relationship\u201d (2018). Faculty Publications \u2013 Portland Seminary. https:\/\/digitalcommons.georgefox.edu\/gfes\/132, 124.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Woodward, The Scandal of Leadership, <\/em>245. Woodward pulls this from Alaine de Botton, Status Anxiety<\/em> (New York: Random House, 2005), 31.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid.,\u00a0248-258.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid.,\u00a0<\/em>223-232.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Young, Ambitious, and Anxious\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My first few years of serving in local church ministry was at an \u201cinfluential megachurch.\u201d This was a big deal for me. I was eager to have my \u201cbig break\u201d and become a successful leader within this institution. But I was not the only one with such ambitions. In fact, when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":152,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2347,2846],"class_list":["post-33151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp01","tag-woodward","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/152"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33151"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33154,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33151\/revisions\/33154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}