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If you’re like most leaders, you wrestle almost every day with fundamental questions about what your organization needs to do next. Which opportunities should you pursue? How should you approach wicked problems? When you see gaps between the resources you need and the resources you have, what’s the best path forward? The reflexive response to these questions is to use the organizational development tools at your disposal. Brainstorm in a staff meeting. Survey your congregation.
Brainstorming and surveying have their place in church management, but Christian leaders bring much more to the table.
As we move beyond the Great Fifty Days of Easter into the season of Pentecost, let’s consider the ways in which the Holy Spirit is not only our Advocate — as Jesus states in John 16:7 — but the one who equips leaders to discern God’s wisdom when we’re sitting with questions that don’t have easy answers.
During his inaugural sermon, Jesus declared that “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18 NRSVUE).
To be leaders who are led by the Spirit, we need to immerse ourselves in Scripture so that, like Jesus, our imagination is thoroughly influenced by the wisdom of God’s word. Spirit-led leaders drink deeply from the reservoir of our sacred text. Spirit-led leaders also set times to intentionally listen to God through silence, solitude and prayer. Listening to God bears all the marks of inefficiency by the standards of modern management, but without this essential practice, we will be led by many voices — and it is unlikely that any of those voices will be the Holy Spirit.
Resources
Pentecost reminds us that God speaks in the ways that we each hear best
We can look to faith communities that welcome people well for models of listening and speaking differently through ministry, writes an associate director of the Thriving Congregations Coordination Program.
By Angel Eaglin
The Holy Spirit can inspire us to understand one another’s humanity
The Holy Spirit is key for Christians looking to communicate across divisions, says the dean of Duke University Chapel.
Q&A with Luke A. Powery
Storm cellars and Pentecost
Like the storm-cellar vigils of his childhood in West Texas, Pentecost is wild and unpredictable, always hard and most always scary, a pastor says. We don’t know what might happen, but we know we’ll be changed.
By Kyle Childress
Rely on the Holy Spirit in the struggle for justice
With the help of the Holy Spirit, churches can build community, welcome the stranger, love our neighbors, and break down walls of oppression and injustice, writes a theologian and professor.
By Grace Ji-Sun Kim
Before you go
The idea of being led by the Spirit may seem like rare mysticism to some and impractical to others. But I’d like to raise this question: If we are not being led by the Holy Spirit, who or what is leading us?
The ideas and impulses that clamor for our attention and influence our thinking are too numerous to name. The season of Pentecost invites us to stay centered on the voice that matters. Congregations cannot afford to settle for following the latest trends in ministry. We are facing a future ripe with challenges and possibilities that we have never seen before. The practices and programs that brought us to where we are will not take us where God is leading. Therefore, we need to learn to be still and recognize the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit, who leads and guides us into “all the truth” (John 16:13).
You can always reach me and the Alban Weekly team at alban@duke.edu. Until next week, keep leading!
Prince R. Rivers
Editor, Alban at Duke Divinity