{"id":37418,"date":"2024-04-11T18:48:03","date_gmt":"2024-04-12T01:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=37418"},"modified":"2024-04-11T18:48:03","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T01:48:03","slug":"the-scandal-of-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-scandal-of-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Scandal of Leadership&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cIf the light inside you is not greater than the light upon you, the light upon you will destroy you.\u201d \u2013 Scott Dickie\u2019s mentor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">The above quote is an excellent summarization of the book, <em>The Scandal of Leadership <\/em>by JR Woodward. I will soon tell you why the quote resonates with the book, but first, reading this book was painful for two reasons. It hurt deeply to read about my brothers in the faith who became a scandal to those who followed them. Whenever I hear, see, or read about a leader who resigned or was fired due to their wrongdoing, I always think, \u201cWho are the people who will reach out to him, his parents, his wife, his children, his church or ministry? Who are the people that will help all of them heal through a tsunami of complex deep issues?<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">The second reason it hurt to read this book is because it mentioned Bill Hybels. This meant I had to finally face what I was ignoring. As a youth pastor for 20 years, I had spent much time at Willow Creek, speaking to their youth and staff. Bill was a man I had adored and enjoyed learning from and being challenged by him. When allegations came out about him, I did not ask, \u201cWho will be there for him and his family?\u201d I simply ignored the allegations and said, \u201cSay, it ain\u2019t so, Bill.\u201d After years of not looking into it, Woodward\u2019s book brought it to the forefront&#8230;again. This time, I decided to accept the truth and grieve for myself, Bill, Lynne, Shauna, Todd and all those women and men who were deeply wounded by Bill.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">In my line of work some of the people I counsel are pedophiles, narcissists, sex offenders, emotional, physical, and\/or mental abusers. Unfortunately, some have been Christian leaders. So far, I have not counseled any pastor who has denied all allegations, but I do know of pastors and church leaders like Bill Hybels and Mark Driscoll who have either denied all allegations or denied some allegations. This is why I also enjoyed reading this painful book because it gave me more understanding of the shadow side of leaders.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Beerel wrote in <em>Rethinking Leadership, <\/em>\u201cMany leadership texts and training and development programs do not address the shadow and its impact on the ethical behavior of leaders. Alas, too many leaders are not aware of their shadows or that such a concept even exists.\u201d<sup>1 <\/sup>Woodward\u2019s book is about helping \u201cleaders better identify the fingerprints of the devil in our own lives.\u201d<sup>2 <\/sup>Could our shadow be the devil\u2019s fingerprints? Peter Scazzero comments on \u201cthe shadow.\u201d \u201cYour shadow is the accumulation of untamed emotions, less-than-pure motives and thoughts that, while largely unconscious, strongly influence and shape your behaviors.\u201d<sup>4 <\/sup>JR Woodward continues about leaders going astray by writing, it \u201coccurs when leaders forsake the mission of God in the way of Christ through the Spirit and instead move (knowingly or unknowingly) toward imitation of the Powers to achieve the leader\u2019s agenda.\u201d<sup>3 <\/sup>JR Woodward does an excellent job communicating that understanding how the enemy works enables the leader to actually imitate Jesus Christ while resisting Satan\u2019s temptations. Thus, the leader will also develop a life worth imitating.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now back to, Scott Dickie\u2019s mentor\u2019s wise words, \u201cIf the light inside you is not greater than the light upon you, the light upon you will destroy you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>The light inside you<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Woodward believes a question all leaders must ask is, \u201cHave I become possessed by my image instead of fully possessing the identity I receive from my triune God.\u201d<sup>5 <\/sup>He uses Philippians 2 as the basis for identifying with Christ by emptying ourselves of our own image. From verses 2-6 he tells leaders to follow the way of Jesus involves:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Refusing to exploit our status;<\/li>\n<li>Regularly emptying ourselves; and<\/li>\n<li>Revolutionary humble obedience.<sup>6 <\/sup><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">When a leader does not exploit her status, seeks to empty herself of self, and humbles herself under the mighty hand of God, she allows the light inside her to shine brightly. Her deep sense of being comes from being with the Father in honest sacred moments, especially when she struggles with ministry or even with her own self-worth. Friedman says, \u201cThe acceptance and even cherishing of uncertainty is critical to keeping the human mind from voyaging into the delusion of omniscience.\u201d<sup>7 <\/sup>When the leader cherishes those uncertain moments, she is pulling strength from the One who is within her. This is humility.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>The light upon you<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">The light upon you most likely refers to the people we are ministering with and to. When we seek to please them, we can become people pleasers or simply lord it over them&#8230;or we can in the words of Woodward, dominate them. \u201cI want to explain how leaders who uncritically imitate patterns of power seen in the fallen world are liable to fall into patterns of domination.\u201d<sup>8 <\/sup>The leader is liable to imitate patterns of power when the light is upon them to simply impress others, which most likely goes deeper than they realize. \u201cThe biggest temptation we face as leaders is to build our own kingdoms, by our own power, for our own glory.\u201d<sup>9 <\/sup>When we use our own power for our own glory, it leads us to eventually dominate people because we just cannot give up this control that comes from not being aware of the Powers influence upon us. The result is the leader\u2019s destruction due to his own dominance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Concluding remarks<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Someday, I will do a study on why Christian pastors and leaders \u201cdeny all allegations\u201d when all evidence points against them. Why is it so hard for them to admit or confess their sin against another person even if that person willingly said yes to participating in a sexual relationship or embezzling money. This topic comes up quite often in my mind especially when I have clients who will not admit to smaller issues in their lives.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">I do have a few ideas about why leaders \u201cdeny all allegations\u201d and <em>The Scandal of Leadership <\/em>has been a good resource to help me see, \u201cwhen we imitate the Powers, our desires become misshaped, and we incarnate our leadership in a domineering fashion.\u201d<sup>10 <\/sup>A few of my questions are:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>What are the factors that lead to imitating the Powers?<\/li>\n<li>How much does past trauma or unhealed wounds play a part in imitating the Powers?<\/li>\n<li>How and why does one reach \u201cthe point of no return\u201d where they are literally \u201cincapable\u201d of confessing their sin?<\/li>\n<li>How much of this is part of a mental health diagnosis?<\/li>\n<li>What contributes to a \u201cseared conscious\u201d of living in sin every week, while preaching the gospel every week?<\/li>\n<li>What part does shame play in shaping our brain, helping us to imitate the Powers, and being silent about our secret sins?<\/li>\n<li>How is it possible to be a pastor and not be aware of your shadow side?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<ol>\n<li>Annabel Beerel. <em>Rethinking Leadership<\/em>. 303.<\/li>\n<li>JR Woodward. <em>The Scandal of Leadership.<\/em> xviii<\/li>\n<li>Ibid. xxxiv.<\/li>\n<li>Peter Scazzero. <em>The Emotionally Healthy Leader. <\/em>55.<\/li>\n<li>JR Woodward. <em>The Scandal of Leadership. <\/em>264.<\/li>\n<li>Ibid. 263.<\/li>\n<li>Edwin Friedman. <em>A Failure of Nerve. <\/em>52.<\/li>\n<li>JR Woodward. <em>The Scandal of Leadership. <\/em>xxviii.<\/li>\n<li>Ibid. 285.<\/li>\n<li>Ibid. 221.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIf the light inside you is not greater than the light upon you, the light upon you will destroy you.\u201d \u2013 Scott Dickie\u2019s mentor. The above quote is an excellent summarization of the book, The Scandal of Leadership by JR Woodward. I will soon tell you why the quote resonates with the book, but first, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"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":[2310],"tags":[3186],"class_list":["post-37418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-woodward-dlgp02","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37418","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\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37419,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37418\/revisions\/37419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}