WHAT DO WE DO NOW?: LEADERSHIP IN A POSTMODERN CONTEXT
John M. Fraiser
October 2006

All around us the world is rapidly changing. Sometimes change seems to happen at a faster pace than the church can adjust to it. Changes are taking place in the social, political, religious, technological and philosophical landscapes. So what do all of these cultural changes mean for today’s church leaders and for today’s theories of leadership? In light of the current cultural context how is leadership today distinct from leadership in past contexts. How can Christian leaders be faithful to demand that the Bible places on their leadership models and the demand of living in a postmodern world? The following essay will detail some of the differences between the current postmodern context and the past context of modernism and draw out the implications of these differences for today’s leaders while addressing the leadership pitfalls of attending to the postmodern culture. This essay will argue that many of the leadership principles and strategies of past generations are inadequate and do not sufficiently address the increasing complexity of leadership challenges in the current postmodern context.

Characterizing the Differences between Yesterday and Today

While it may be obvious to most people that the culture has changed significantly between the modern and postmodern periods articulating what the differences in cultures are may not as obvious. While the following list of cultural shifts is by no means an exhaustive list or an exhaustive description of the changes that have taken place between modernity and postmodernity, it is intended to identify some of the key distinctions between these periods and the ideologies associated with them.

The differences between the past cultural context and the present context can be characterized in terms of two types of closely related changes: social changes and ideological changes. Social changes relate to the behavior of people groups and relations between them, while ideological changes relate to the life philosophies and worldviews that a culture chooses for itself.

Social Changes

The world has become increasingly more integrated over the past thirty years. Time and space have become compressed as people have the opportunity through the aid of technology to share ideas, trade, communicate and travel. Improvements in travel technology, computer technology and the invention of the Internet have made ideas and religions from other parts of the world nearly as accessible as those from one’s culture. This phenomenon is what D. A. Carson calls empirical pluralism,¹ sometimes referred to as the “Global Village.” A diversity of ethnic backgrounds, traditions and religions are existing side-by-side as never before. Americans have become more aware of other ways of living and have been forced to adapt their lifestyles to the presence of the many aspects of diversity.

Ideological Changes

While none of these social developments should be characterized as positive or negative in and of themselves, these developments have led to ideological changes which can be characterized as such. As a consequence of the awareness of and interaction with so many diverse cultures as a way of life, we are confronted with the challenge that others beliefs and worldviews present to our own beliefs and worldview. Furthermore, as a society we are required to learn how to interact and live peaceably with a diversity of worldviews. This attempt to co-exist with other beliefs has, in turn, produced a worldview itself known as philosophical pluralism which holds that no one’s beliefs are more valuable, truthful or deserving of privilege than another. Philosophical pluralism is seen by many in society as a way to cope with overload of information which makes it seem arrogant for anyone to claim that there belief structure is right and all other belief structures are wrong. As John Stackhouse states,

No one can possibly list, let alone understand, much less master, the range of ideological options on offer to North Americans today. Thus the claim that “my ideology is superior to all others” proves immediately difficult, if not flatly impossible to demonstrate. So one’s enthusiasm for one’s own ideology ought to be expressed in a way appropriate to this situation.²

Even though many may not blatantly espouse philosophical pluralism, they have a keen suspicion of anyone who makes absolute truth claims that deny the validity of another’s point of view. This tendency has filtered into the evangelical church as well. While many are passionate about and committed to Christ, they have trouble declaring to non-Christians that they must believe in Christ as they do. In addition, the Christian church has been edged out. It has largely lost the place of influence in society that it once had and is no longer the center of community life and of the catalyst for moral reform that it once was. Its relevance has come to be viewed in terms of the individual and no longer in terms of the society.

The atrocities of war in the twentieth century and the ideologies that gave impetus to them have also contributed to philosophical pluralism and the suspicion of grand stories that seek to explain the world and tell us how to live.³ On a smaller but more consistent scale, the various ideological, racial, and religious communities in American society feel that they have been oppressed and discriminated against by the truth claims of opposing communities. The result is that each group “feels like an oppressed minority, outnumbered and outgunned, that must fight for its rights or be pushed to the back of the bus. As a result, our culture as a whole has taken on an adversarial attitude. We are all oppressed, we are all under attack, we must all fight back.”⁴

Each of us has witnessed, in ways both great and small, that truth claims are rarely just truth claims but can become subtle devices for power and denomination. Society is no longer naïve to the fact that those who declare truth often do so for selfish gain. The result is a loss of confidence in truth itself, and a pessimism toward human potential, both of which were hallmarks of the modernist period.

In addition to suspicion of truth claims, abuses of power and the increase in available information has lead to a realization of the limits of human ability. Society has a unwillingness to believe that one person has the answers, and not for how to live life but even in the workforce, in the classroom and certainly in the pulpit. Thus we have become reticent to follow anyone who claims to know the way—whatever it may be.

Postmodernism is also identified with a rejection of basic human goodness. We know each person has limitations, weaknesses and moral faults. So what are they? We are prone to distrust any leader who attempts to hide them. To do so is an attempt to deny ones humanity. The complement to rejection of basic human goodness is that honesty, authenticity and faithfulness to oneself have become the new virtues.

The Effect of Postmodernism on the Study of Leadership

So what does this mean for the study of leadership? What impact, if any, does this have on how one leads a Christian ministry? Looking at leadership resources in the past thirty years, one would get the impression that the postmodern context is insignificant for leadership, since so many of these resources ignore the matter. But the fact remains that leadership always takes place within the culture. And when the culture undergoes such a fundamental shift, what people expect from leaders, what leaders can accomplish, and the virtues of leadership itself, take on new meanings. Thus, there is no cookie-cutter approach to leadership that can be slapped onto the leadership needs of any social context in any time period. Leadership and leaders not only change the world, but the world changes leadership and leaders. We can dislike the context in which we find ourselves; we can rage against it, but we must be honest about the reality of it. God has called us to minister in such a context and to go on as though nothing has changed must never be an option. If leaders are to be effective in the culture, they must engage it, and if they are to engage it, they must understand it. To understand the postmodern culture does not require one to agree with everything postmodern or even to tolerate everything, rather, it requires that one enter into conversation with it. As Kevin Vanhoozer states,

There are several ways in which we can respond to a new phenomenon such as postmodernity: we can deny or ignore it. We can refuse to recognize either its importance or its right to exist. Not a few Christians are in denial over postmodernity. Second, we can defy, even demonize it as a threat to our security or way of life….We can, thirdly, deify it, conceding its authority because newer (and more popular) means better….A fourth option is to discuss with it. The goal here is to engage it in a mutually edifying conversation.⁵

The demand of the postmodern context on Christian leaders, then is this: to lead in a way that is faithful to the God of Scripture, that is culturally and intentionally relevant, and that acknowledges and situates leadership demands with an awareness of the realistic limitations of finite and sinful leaders. In general, leadership materials and directives have rarely cast leadership in this way. Arguably, much of the reason for the lack of capable leaders is not due to the failure to appropriate leadership advice and strategies dolled out in so many leadership resources, but instead due precisely to the appropriation and application of such advice and strategies. This of course does not mean that there is no timeless leadership advice—indeed the Bible contains such advice—or that there is not insights that are of immense value in leadership books over the past thirty years, or even that no leadership books have addressed the relevance of postmodernity for leadership strategies. Rather the point is that there is much more discussion needed on this important issue if the church is to produce effective leaders. In order for this discussion to take place postmodernity has to register as a significant challenge in the minds of those involved in the study of leadership.

What the Postmodern Shift Means for Today’s Leaders

Not every aspect of postmodernism presents a challenge to leadership. In fact several aspects of it are largely irrelevant, but there significant ways that it places a new demand on leaders.

Virtue and Morality in Postmodern context

Leadership has been defined in a variety of ways in the literature, but the basic threads that run through nearly every definition is that leaders secure followers and influence their followers’ way of thinking.⁶ As mentioned above, most of those in a postmodern culture are skeptical of any power grab and are suspicious of those who attempt to persuade them and exercise influence over them. So how one goes about securing followers and influencing people is of the utmost importance. Consider Aubrey Malphurs discussion of influence in leadership in The Dynamics of Church Leadership. Malphurs defines a leader as “a godly servant who knows where he or she is going. The leader knows the direction of his or her life as well as where he or she is leading the church. There is both a personal and corporate direction. The personal direction is the leader’s own mission and vision in life. The corporate direction is the mission and vision of the leader for the church.”⁷ There are several problems with this definition. Even on the most charitable reading, there is still great potential for misunderstanding.

Malphurs’ definition leaves too much room for leaders who claim to be godly servants, and even appear to be so, that know where they are going and where they want to take the church but are still being driven by a personal agenda to which they attach Christ’s name and mission. This scenario is all too familiar to many church members, so much so that a leader’s unwavering confidence on where he wants to lead the church can produce suspicion, resistance and fear in those who are effected by a leader’s decisions. To be fair, Malphurs goes on to say that Christ has shown us the pattern for his church and that the Great Commission is the direction for the church. While this statement is certainly true, this rhetoric is almost always wrapped around leadership decisions for a church, even in cases of abuse of church leadership. Something is still missing. What is missing is the recognition of a change in the expectations of a postmodern society on leadership. Society has become much more aware that leaders great and small make mistakes, have personal weaknesses of character and ability, and frequently second guess themselves. Thus, postmodern society has come to hold as a virtuous, a leader who is honest about these struggles and inadequacies. It has come to the realization of the limits of human ability, and is no longer willing to believe that humanity—let alone a single person—can have all the answers. We know that each person has limitations and spiritual weaknesses so what are they? We are suspicious of anyone who attempts to hide them. To do so is to deny ones humanity. Gretchen M. Spreitzer and Thomas G. Cummings even go so far as to say, “Next-generation leaders will need to fail frequently. If leaders aren’t failing often enough, then they probably aren’t stretching themselves enough….Failure is perceived as inevitable and expected—as an opportunity for learning.”⁸

What postmodernism has come to characterize as leadership virtues is leadership that does not seem to have the whole plan mapped out, is not absolutely confident in every decision, and does not seek to pass itself of as such. This does not preclude foresight in planning or confidence in executing a plan. Rather, it means that effective leaders are free to second-guess themselves putting aside their personal pride not fearing that he may appear weak. It is not an excuse for incompetence, but a demonstration that they are capable of rethinking their decisions and changing course if necessary. People want to follow this kind of leadership, and find it comforting that leaders can acknowledge this rather than passing themselves of as free from doubt or any second-guessing of their plans. Far from this being weak leadership, it is authentic and humble leadership that draws followers and gains credibility in a society that no longer looks for a hero with all the answers.

The life of Christ shows that doubt and second-guessing can at times be virtuous qualities in a leader. Even though Christ knew that he hand been sent to earth for the purpose of atoning for the sin of humanity (Mk 10:45), as the time of his death drew near he was nevertheless anxious, fearful and sorrowful (Matt 26:37-38). Though he did not give in to his struggle, it was no failure or lack of faith in God on his part that he had these emotions. He did not try to pass himself off to his disciples as beyond the real emotions that are essential to our humanity. Far from his struggle having an ambivalent or negative result for his leadership, this conveyed to his disciples the urgency of the situation and his desperate need for prayer (even if they were too self-absorbed to pray for him).

                  A word of caution is in order though. One should not think that the postmodern virtues of authenticity and honesty that they are always loaded with the same meaning that they have for the Christian. Primarily, by authenticity and honesty, postmoderns mean being true to oneself above all ethical norms. But the Christian should recognize that our truest self is not our sin, but a new creation in Christ (2 Cor 5:17). Old things have passed away and all things have become new. What it means to be authentic and honest to oneself must be radically reinterpreted according to the word of God, and it will never require us to embrace our sin, but neither will it likewise mean that leaders can never be honest to those under their leadership about struggles against sin, doubt and anxiety. Reading many leadership books one gets the impression that there is no place for the virtues of authenticity and second-guessing, not so much because they deny these virtues, but because they are largely silent on the matter. Leadership in today’s postmodern context demands that successful leaders will contextualize leadership strategies to cultural demands that do not conflict with Scripture.⁹

Teamwork and Integration in a Postmodern Context

                 Marshall Goldsmith, seeking to articulate the difference between the leader of the past and the leader of the future, states:

In a talk to the Drucker Foundational Advisory Board in 1993, Peter Drucker said, “The leader of the past was a person who knew how to tell. The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.” The traditional hierarchical model of leadership will not work effectively for major organizations in tomorrow’s changing world….In most cases, the leader of the future won’t know enough to tell people what to do. The world is changing too rapidly. No one person will be smart enough to keep up….leaders will need to effectively involve others and elicit participation “because tasks will be too complex and information too widely distributed for leaders to solve problems on their own.”¹⁰

Though Goldsmith’s comments are primarily targeted at those in corporate leadership, his insights are no less true for church leadership. Leadership should be characterized as a plurality of leadership that does not have a single person at the helm who is expected to understand and know everything necessary for the ministry to move forward. As Eddie Gibbs notes, “It is unreasonable to expect that all of these [necessary] gifts and skills will reside in one individual, which is one of the fundamental reasons why leadership must be team-based rather than attempted solo."

While some churches will have a primary leader, the primary difference in leadership in a postmodern context is that a leader will function in many ways as one learning from the leadership of the other leaders serving under his authority.¹¹ This willingness for leaders to learn leadership from those who beneath them in the leadership structure is what Goldsmith identifies as the tell model of leadership versus the ask model. What this will mean for the study of leadership then is that while leadership remains defined by influencing others, this influence will take place by the leadership of more than a single person. As Steven Bernstein and Anthony Smith explain, “Leadership is now understood by many to imply collective action, orchestrated in such a way as to bring about significant change while raising the competencies and motivation of all those involved—that is, action, where more than one individual influences the process.”¹²

                  The reason that so much of leadership is done in terms of teams and groups is that the world is much more integrated than it used to be and this requires more cooperation. Consider for example a church in any moderately sized city, say Cleveland. Whether the church is urban or suburban, makes little difference in the sense that pluralism has brought about such a degree of integration of cultures and worldviews that cross-cultural ministry is unavoidable. To reach such a diverse culture will inevitably require a leadership team with a variety of gifts and personalities, each team member learning from the leadership of the other.

Another influence of pluralism upon leadership is that there are so many more worldview options available and each one is vying for a person’s allegiance. People are less inclined to adopt a religion by virtue of their upbringing or by virtue of social pressure. What has come to set one worldview apart from another for people is building relationships with others within a worldview. This does not diminish the significance of truth. Instead it elevates the importance people place upon the importance that a claim to truth makes in a persons life. Christianity relied far too long on the monopoly it had in society.¹³ Pluralism has brought this to an end and Christianity can no longer survive by being the only religion on the market or by simply touting its truth. What connects the truth of Christianity to a person’s life is when a Christian builds a relationship a non-Christian, and thereby giving them an opportunity to live out the difference that this truth makes in life. For this reason, it is impossible for one leader, or even a group of leaders, to build enough relationships that will have the impact that Christ calls the church to have in society. This means that the primary amount of influence that the church must have in the world is not the influence of its leaders. Effective leadership in a postmodern context will not come primarily from throngs gathered around the preaching of one man at a crusade or from a dynamic personality who has a TV, book and tape ministry. As important as these models of leadership may be, they are neither primary nor necessary. The most effective leadership will come from grassroots influence of ordinary Christians reaching others by living authentically and relationally with non-Christians, bearing witness to the Way, the Truth and the Life in both word and deed.

The goal then for church leaders must be to increase the influence of those under their influence, rather than bring them further under the sway of the their influence. In short, the goal for a leader must be to get others thinking about how they can be leaders. Leadership is not about securing power from others, but finding ways to empower others to be what God in Christ calls them to be. It is not about using people to help you be what you want to be. As discussed above, any hint of the latter motivation will not only produce suspicion about such a person but will lead to utter rejection and disdain of such a person in a postmodern society. Increasing the leadership of others is the only way forward for the church in a society that offers so many competing worldviews.

Servant Leadership in a Postmodern Context

Leadership resources have rightly emphasized the importance of servant leadership. Christ himself set the supreme model of servant leadership for us. No biblical text is more important for teaching servant leadership than Philippians 2:1-11. Here Christ is the one who took on the form of a servant, humbled himself and was obedient to God even to the point of death on a cross. How this model of servant leadership is worked out in a postmodern context has a radically different character today. The more the effectiveness in virtually all disciplines is measured in terms of met needs in a postmodern context, the stronger the pull will be for church leaders to gauge their status as servant leaders by the number of needs they meet. However, meeting needs can be a deceptive method of servant leadership, primarily because people typically consider a need having been met only after the other person shows us that it has been met, thinking that a need must surely be “felt.” But a leader must not presume that a person always knows what constitutes a need or when a need has been met. As the world becomes more chaotic, the number of felt needs increases. The task of servant leadership in a postmodern context, is to separate true human needs from merely perceived ones, and to then prioritize these human needs. This draws a leader back to the effectiveness of leadership in groups. Even the most servant-like leader (Jesus Christ excepted) cannot meet all or even most of a person’s needs, and therefore the necessity of a network of servant leaders is necessary.

Furthermore, the work of servant leadership has a certain invisible quality about it, making it hard to define in terms of meeting needs. For this reason, servant leadership must be defined primarily in terms of faithfulness, rather than primarily in terms of perceived effectiveness. A leader may not see the effects of what he does to the degree of effectiveness that he expected nor in the time that he expected. In fact, the effects that a leader expects might never come about in his lifetime. His work may only produce the fruit he hoped for many years into the future. The complexity of the postmodern context makes it harder to predict and expect results, and a godly servant leader may well conclude himself a failure in servant leadership if defines his work primarily in terms of results. Looking again at Philippians 2, Paul does not point to the results as what made Christ a servant leader. Instead he emphasizes the degree to which he emptied himself, humbled himself and was obedient to God. These are the same standards by which leaders should measure proper servant leadership, and the complexity of the postmodern situation reminds us of the inability to measure our effectiveness and helps free us to leave the results in the hands of God.

Pitfalls of Postmodernism and Potential Quagmires of Relating to Culture

There are several dangers of redefining leadership in a postmodern culture. The church must be watchful in its understanding of postmodernism, taking care that it does not overcompensate for what it believes to be the ills of modernity and thereby become victim to the ills of postmodernism.

Are we capitulating to the culture?

A very clear and present danger for the church is that in seeking to be relevant to the culture, it can adapt itself to such an extent that (ironically) it looses its relevance. Whatever culture the church finds itself in, it is called to stand above the fray and be strangers and shine as lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation (Phil 2:15). But this call has a two-sided demand to it. In order to shine as lights, the church must not capitulate to the culture and thereby loose its relevance. But neither must it shut itself off from it or despise those who comprise the culture to such an extent that we loose relevance as well. Navigating the waters of cultural relevance requires biblical wisdom. It requires knowing what are the non-negotiables of the faith, and likewise knowing what are those things that are capable of legitimate conditioning by the mindset of the culture. Leaders must be careful not to treat as biblical those things which have been so identified with the ways of modernity that anything that is contrary to modernity is treated as contrary to Scripture. Likewise, leaders seeking to adapt a timeless message to a postmodern context must not treat as objectionable anything they identify with modernity, lest they find themselves rejecting that which is in fact not modern at all, but, quite in fact, biblical. I do not propose to offer a formula for such discernment, but a good beginning rule of thumb is to know what is culture and what is Christ.

Shouldn’t Our Leadership Strategy Come From the Bible?

The Bible is sufficient to train the church’s leaders. It is sufficient to teach the church how to conduct itself in the midst of any culture. In this sense, all of our leadership strategy should come from the Bible. However, this does not mean that there is nothing that culture can teach us. Even the secular world has many wonderful things to say on leadership. The Bible is not the whole bag of leadership marbles. But neither is it a small bag of leadership marbles to which we must add culture’s bag of leadership marbles to get the whole bag, we should view Scripture as a lens through which we understand what true leadership is. It is our lens for interpretation of what leadership found in any context should look like. This prepares us to recognize good leadership principles and strategy that come from the culture, but also prepares us to radically reinterpret whatever is brought over from the culture.¹⁴

Furthermore, as Kevin Vanhoozer says, “Postmodernity has not discovered anything that was not already available, at least implicitly, in Christian scripture and tradition.”¹⁵ Any promise that postmodernism holds out for the church is only what the Bible was telling us all along. But we are slow and stubborn learners. This is not the first time God has used culture in this way. God has frequently used historical and cultural events to teach his people what his prophets have been preaching all along.

Conclusion

So what are the consequences if leaders do not make changes in leadership strategy in light of the postmodern context? It would be hard to predict them all, but one can be sure that loss of relevance, exploitation of power and stifled church growth will be among them. As I have argued, there is no leadership strategy, or even leadership principle, which can be frozen and preserved for use in any and every cultural climate. (Even leadership principles will require reinterpretation for a new age.) Leadership strategies have a shelf-life, they are made for use at a certain time and must be used while they can. Leaders are constantly engaged in a discussion that rethinks and reformats what it means to be a leader in any part of society, and if the church is to accept the challenge of leadership in the midst of the crisis of postmodern culture it must join the discussion.

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4 Tim Downs, Finding Common Ground: How to Communicate with those Outside the Christian Community… While We Still Can (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 1999), 24.

5 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Pilgrim’s Digress: Christian Thinking on and about the Post/Modern Way” in Christianity and the Postmodern Turn, ed. Myron B. Penner (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2003), 72.

11 My own particular view of church government structure is that a plurality of equal leadership is the model presented in Scripture and has the most potential for effectiveness out of all the possible models. Still, I recognize that not all churches have chosen this model, and for that reason it is helpful to discuss the relevance of group leadership in conjunction with other models.

12 Steven M. Bernstein and Anthony F. Smith, “The Puzzles of Leadership,” in The Leader of the Future, 282.