Four Ways Your Leadership Grows More Powerful in Challenging Times
Everyone has power. What are you doing with yours? Is it going neglected? Is it growing vain ambitions? How to instead grow your power for more peace, courage, wisdom and love these days for all?
Maybe you are familiar with the famous Serenity Prayer that’s become synonymous with Alcoholics Anonymous.
With its popularity or association with AA, the prayer can either seem overly trite or only for the desperate.
But did you know that before AA discovered this prayer, the YMCA helped distribute it to American soldiers stationed in Europe during World War 2?
Why would they do that?
Because the prayer deeply resonated with soldiers and their commanding officers facing a firestorm of violence, death, and meaninglessness on the battlefield.
According to the recollection of early AA leaders, they were serendipitously introduced to the prayer through a random Memoriam in the New York Herald Tribune. It immediately struck a chord.
It would take years for them to trace the origins of the prayer to the Rev. Dr. Reinhold Niebhur, a famous German-American Christian theologian teaching ethics and practical ministry at a seminary in New York. [Read more about it here.]
Someone heard Dr. Niebhur share this prayer at the end of a sermon in the 1930s, and it took off from there. Now it’s become America’s prayer for citizens, neighbors, leaders, and lovers who want to live sober, clean and full of healing purpose.
God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; and Wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.
- Rev. Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, Union Theological Seminary
How can this powerful seminary/YMCA/AA prayer be a healing asset to leaders immersed in challenging times at home and work and in their community? Here are four ways your leadership can grow more powerful in challenging times:
Leaders don’t increase in power because they suppress conflict or make “fake” peace, but according to this prayer they grow in power when they can accept that which cannot be changed, and instead of being in turmoil or broken over it, they can experience serenity in light of it.
This requires a particular kind of groundedness with reality, an ability to perceive and understand what is really going on, an openness and vulnerability to truth, and a humble honest spirit.
You can see how this kind of leader would grow in power through their steady serene presence amid chaos.
Leaders don’t increase in power when they are timid, cowardly, shallow, and vain in the face of challenging times, but rather through their willingness to courageously face it. It takes courage to discern what is right, to state what is wrong, and to act justly while risking being misunderstood.
In any conflict, someone must go first, someone must broker the change towards healing and reconciliation in a healthy way: only a courageous leader will lean in first and stay with it until the work is completed.
Imagine what kind of power this kind of courageous leader can garner for good.
Leaders don’t increase in power when they hem and haw, when they procrastinate and piddle around when they stick their finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. Rather, leaders who do the work to gain wisdom and understanding, who seek knowledge and learn from everyone and everything increase in power, especially in complex and conflicting times.
What most people don’t realize is how much suffering accompanies wise leaders. Ironically, we learn the most from our failures but most of our failures come from our inability to handle our successes. Paradoxically, the more we see and understand about the world, the more our hearts will be broken.
Wisdom does not lift us above the suffering of the world, but immerses us in it, that we might lead in such a way that we leverage power so that there might be more liberty and justice for all.
That’s a power that can’t be bought or earned through a certificate, but one that will transform all who are proximate to it.
Leaders don’t increase in power when they mistrust and close their hearts to love. Without love we are clanging symbols, we are obnoxious and useless. Without trust, there are no bonds of solidarity, no bonds of cooperation, no friendship to bear the burdens of this life.
The most powerful leaders we’ve ever known are those who centered their lives in love and worked to lead as an expression of love: Mother Teresa, Rev Martin Luther King Jr., Father Greg Boyle, etc. There is no ego in this kind of love-motivated leadership, no vanity, no selfish ambition, no room for revenge or amassing accolades out of an envious heart.
Love, not fear, is what motivates greatness, what creates the conditions for peace, is the heart of courage, and the means for wisdom.
We need more leaders full of this four-fold power to prepare and guide people to overcome evil with good, to resist violence with just mercy, to root out corruption with generosity, and to transform broken spirits into a flourishing community for all.
These four-fold ways are a meditation on the prayer by Rev. Niebuhr, in light of the leadership of Jesus the Good Shepherd, that of the apostles of the early church, my own experiences as a Christian pastor in Fort Wayne, and my fellow Christian YMCA leaders across the movement, especially in the Holy Land.
For Christians, this four-fold power is a salty and spirited way to be in the world, a way to participate in the kingdom of God as we daily surrender our will to Christ Jesus and abide in his presence as we go about both the mundane routines of life but also amidst the most difficult challenges of our times.
But we don’t do this alone, we go full of the power of the Spirit of Jesus, sent with our friends, our band of brothers and sisters united in Christ, our sober community sent for the healing of the war-scarred nations.
So how to grow more powerful as a leader amidst challenging times? Get proximate to other leaders living out this prayer of peace, courage, wisdom and love; get sober and clean; stay close to Jesus the Good Shepherd, the most power-full leader for all.