Power and Leadership

through the Lens of the

Gospel

Joel W. Harder

Conflict vs. Creation Cosmogony

Enuma Elish

Marduk slays Tiamat

creatio ex nihilo

Jussive Tense

Imperative Tense

Imago Dei

Humanity’s Creaturliness and Personhood

Utterly dependent on God

Independent to act

God invites humanity to join in His creative work

Functional view

Cultivate the Garden

“Imago Dei is something human persons do, rather than something

they are…” (Cortez)

They are official representatives of the Divine Being

Broken image

Difficult Doctrine of Love of God

Love originating within the Triune God (D. A. Carson)

Can we view power the same way?

Ministry of reconciliation“All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and

gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was

reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against

them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”

- 2 Corinthians 5:18-19

Coercive vs. Creative Power

Idolatry Image Bearers

Safety Poverty

Leadership Theory

Peter Northouse

Leadership is a Process

Leadership involves Influence

Leadership involves goal attainment

Leadership happens in a group context

Transformational Leadership (Warren Bennis)

Situational Leadership (Hershey/Blanchard)

Servant Leadership (Greanleaf, Wilkes)

Warren Bennis (1925–2014)

Life Timeline

• 1925–Born in NJ to working-class Jewish family during tough economic times.

• 1943–Enlisted in the US Army Specialized Training Program and worked as riveter on a plane assembly.

• 1944–Deployed as a young officer to South Germany at the Battle of the Bulge; endured extreme hardships in battle, earning a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.

Warren Bennis

Life Highlights & Accomplishments

Regarded as a pioneer of modern Leadership Studies.

Protégé of Douglas McGregor while at Antioch College—both served together later at MIT (Sloan School of Management).

Authored 30 books, such as Leaders, On Becoming a Leader (1989), Managing People is Like Herding Cats (1997, 1999), and An Invented Life, among others.

Advisor to four U.S. Presidents.

Consultant to many Fortune 500 Companies.

Taught courses at Harvard, Boston University, and the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta.

Served as Visiting Prof of Leadership at Exeter Univ. & UCLA

Warren Bennis

Influence

One of his most influential books, On Becoming A Leader (1989), emphasizes that a

good leader must be authentic, as well as combine elements of experience,

knowledge, and ethics.

He coined the ideas: “Management of: Attention, Meaning, Trust, and Self.” (“Four

Competencies Of Leadership” from An Invented Life), among many others.

“Established Leadership as a respectable academic field” (Financial Times, 2000).

Top 10 Leaders in Business (Business Week, 2007).

Sources and Related: Still surprised: A memoir of a life in leadership (2010); On becoming a leader (1989); An invented life (1994);

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Bennis

Transformational Leadership

Definition: Getting a group of people to behave in a way – or work in a

way – that they would not have on their own in order to attain a

preferable future. Envisioning a better future and casting that vision for a

group of people such that they are inspired and motivated to work to

achieve that future.

Transformational Leadership is often researched in comparison/contrast

with Transactional Leadership: Avolio, Bass, and Jung (1999)

Biblical Examples

Moses

Joshua

Nehemiah

Hersey-Blanchard:

Situational Leadership

Paul Hersey Ken Blanchard

Overview of Situational

Leadership

Different situations demand different kinds of leadership (Northhouse,

2007, p. 91)

Leadership composed of both directive and supportive dimensions

that need to be applied appropriately in a given situation.

Also consider the development level of subordinates

Strengths

Stood the test of time in the marketplace

Used in training programs for more than 400 of the Fortune 500

Companies (Hersey-Blanchard, 1993)

Practicality:

Easy to understand, intuitively suitable, easily applied

Prescriptive approach, rather than just a descriptive theory of

leadership

Emphasizes leadership flexibility

Weaknesses

Paucity of scholarly research on situational research

Potentially ambiguous conceptualization of subordinates

development level

Research questions pairing of certain leadership styles with

development levels

Does not fully address one-to-one versus group leadership in an

organizational setting

Servant Leadership

Robert Greenleaf coined the term servant leadership

(1977). As a theoretical foundation, servant leadership

proposes that lasting and legitimate influence is

cultivated through a servant-hearted approach to

other people.

Definition: The great reversal in which the leader

places themselves in the subservient role to those

they lead, modeling a sacrificial selflessness and

encouraging those they lead to do the same.

The Lasting

Leadership of

Jeremiah

Rembrandt

(1603)

Purpose and Message

As a prophet, Jeremiah’s purpose was to deliver the

message the Lord gave him

A message to bring the people back to the Lord and to

warn them of the consequences should they continue

their present course of action

Jeremiah was a man burdened with his calling

Struggled with the Lord concerning his mission

Struggled with the people

The calling of Jeremiah

I’m just a little pebble, here!

Notice the phrase throughout the narrative, “declares the Lord”

Romans 10:14-17

The faith that causes a change in the eternal state of souls – from

condemned to co-heir with Christ – comes through the hearing of

the word

The Currency of the Kingdom is the Word of God

Four Oracles of Jeremiah

Indictment Oracles

Stubbornness, injustice (5:20-31), and improper use of temple and sacrifice (7:8-31)

The people had forsaken the Lord and had worshiped idols (2:5-3:5)

Covenant violation of the first degree

Judgment Oracles

National in scope and mostly political

Instruction Oracles

Fewer than a dozen – why?

The people had the covenant and knew what God required

This is a call to return to the Lord

Aftermath Oracles

Purpose is summarized in 29:11

The Lord would bring them back, make a new covenant with them, rebuilt city, return to God,

righteous Davidic king would sit on the throne

Major Themes

God’s Policy with Nations

Jeremiah’s sermon at the potter’s house (18)

Policy is consistently seen throughout the Old Testament

Metaphor of Scales (Hill & Walton)

Metaphor is found in Genesis 15:16 – Abraham is told several centuries need to

elapse before the land can be given to him because “the sin of the Amorite is

not yet complete.”

Major Themes

This system is operative for nations, NOT INDIVIDUALS, so it should not be

confused with salvation by works.

The scale of deeds is never conveyed as the way that God deals with

individuals.

“Nations are not “saved” from sin, nor do they exist eternally. Nations are treated

solely on physical and temporal terms, so the system can in no way be equated

to the eternal destiny of individuals. Grace does exist in the system as evidenced

by the longsuffering character of God, and it continues to manifest his grace,

because there is nothing in Scripture to suggest that God has changed his policy

for dealing with nations.” (Hill & Walton)

Major Themes cont.

New Covenant (31:33-34)

Foremost theological contribution

Treaty format to God’s Covenants

Preamble, Historical prologue, stipulations, a document clause, list of witnesses, list of curses and blessings

Rather than being etched on stone, it was to be written on the heart

People would not have to be taught the law, but would intrinsically know the law

From the Least to Greatest shall “know the Lord” – Priesthood of all Believers

Terms of the covenant are not explained – so the terms have not changed and remains the Abrahamic, elaborated at Sinai and to David.

Until Hebrews 8

False Prophets

Surrounded by those preached deliverance, peace, and prosperity

Accused Jeremiah of being the false prophet

There were times he appeared to suspect hat the charge was correct (20:7-10)

Authorship – Lamentations

Jeremiah

2 Chronicles 35:25 “Jeremiah composed laments for Josiah”

An unknown eyewitness of the fall of Jerusalem

Purpose

In contrast with 2 Kings 24-25, which documents the historical data

about the fall of Jerusalem, Lamentations captures the pathos of

that tragic turn in Israel’s covenant experience with Yahweh.

The poems preserve the Hebrew response to the unthinkable and

inexpressible

The utter destruction of David’s Zion

The ruin of Yahweh’s temple

The divine abandonment of the “elect” of God.

Leadership Style

Transformational?

Getting a group of people to do something they don’t want to do in

order to obtain a preferable future.

“He called for genuine repentance, authenticated by actual change

of behavior, and he seems to have done so with some hope that it

might avert the calamity he saw coming” (Wright, 2014, p. 22).

Was he effective?

Lessons Learned from Jeremiah

Jeremiah speaks God’s Words.

Jeremiah feels God’s feelings.

Jeremiah the man and Jeremiah the book are “inseparably bound

together” but different.

Jeremiah the man preached to Judah about the fall…

Jeremiah the book preaches to Israel in exile (and to us today)

The Teacher’s Lesson

“The point in preserving in such detail his forty years of preaching

was to provide the exiles with an understanding what had now

fallen upon them - and out of that understanding to build hope

“it’s not Jeremiah gloating, ‘I told you so!’

“but rather a tear-filled, ‘I told you why!’” (Wright, p. 47)

Avoid Mission Drift

He called for genuine repentance and behavior change...But as his appeals were systematically rejected, he set about the task God had given him…

to ‘uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow’ (1:10)

Jeremiah dismantled and demolished in his preaching the great pillars of Israel’s historical faith:

election, land, law, covenant, temple and monarchy

The people had betrayed all these in their rebellion and perversity, such that putting faith in them was simply self-deception.

They became a ‘falsehood’ - most damning words Jeremiah hurls at the whole religious and political establishment.

God’s Choice

Jeremiah’s mission was not his own freely chosen path of service,

but a participation in a divine purpose that was being shaped in the

mind of God before Jeremiah was shaped in his mother’s womb

I knew you

I set you apart

such sanctification is also a lesson in loneliness of leadership

I appointed you

Speak Truth to Power

Knew the source of their authority

What mattered was not Jeremiah’s confidence (or lack of it), but

God’s command

“To everyone to whom I send you, you shall go, and everything which

I command you, you shall speak...”

“In a sea of false prophets, Jeremiah stood out like a funeral

director at a wedding…”

Transformational?

Consider 29:7 - “seek the welfare of the city”

It is conceivable that Daniel was familiar as he prayed three times a

day

Nebuchadnezzar's second dream

“It’s hard to go on hating someone when you pray for them every

day” (2014, p. 294).

Transformational?

A Biblical mission demands a Biblical ethic

all forms of legitimate service

Paul’s view of ‘doing good’ in Galatians 6:9

concrete social benefaction, contributing to the public good of all

citizen

Transformational?

Consider 29:11

From victims to visionaries

“[God’s people] needed to understand (as we also need to) that it

was a future guaranteed, not by their amazing ability to survive all

historical disasters, but by

“God’s amazing grace,

“God’s ability to bring life out of death,

“God’s determination to bring redemption beyond judgment

Vision for a preferable future

“It was a future that Jeremiah never saw with

the eyes in his head, only portrayed with the

eyes of his faith” (2014, p. 41).