Keynote address at the Annual Borderlands Lecture

Undefended Authenticity: A Christian understanding of power and its relevance for how power and leadership is exercised in all organisations

"If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever."

- G.K. Chesterton to Alexander Woollcott[i]

In this lecture I will be briefly examining the sources and types of power that have been categorised by social psychology and adapted to help understand power dynamics within many organisations, not least the Church itself, and then ask the question: what is the type and source of power that we see in Christ, and do these categories help our understanding, and what may be missing from them?

Let me start with a definition of power.

Power is the ability to influence and shape people and events. It is not the same as authority, though it is important to recognise that “leadership within organizations is only attainable through the combination and use of power and authority.”[ii] As John Kotter puts it, “power is the ability to influence others to get things done, while authority is the formal rights that come to a person who occupies a particular position, since power does not necessarily accompany a position.”[iii]

We all have power of one sort or another. We can all exercise influence and shape events. These so called sources of power were first categorised in 1959 by psychologists John French and Bertram Raven.[iv] And, as I say, many organisations have used them to understand how they exercise and where necessary limit power, and how power is used wisely and humanely.

Building on this seminal work, Roy Oswald applied this thinking to the Church.[v] Using Oswald’s categories, Roger Matthews very helpfully defines seven types of power in a way that can encourage leaders to identify where their power lies and how power is distributed and exercised by different individuals in different contexts.

He identifies seven varieties of power. I think they are relevant for all organisations and for all disciplines. Let me read them -

1. Formal power/positional power – the power of status that is granted and received by virtue of the occupation or office that a person holds. Archbishops have a certain amount of this sort of power. But so do many others.

2. Reputational power – the power that is gained through being the ‘right’ kind of person, either though birth or education or wealth or gained through having the right connections and knowing or being related to the ‘right’ people. This sort of power still probably has an undue influence in British society in particular, where deference to certain people with certain backgrounds is still palpable. But it is also something that can be earned by consistently demonstrating one’s worth, reliability and usefulness.

3. Instrumental power – the power to be able to access and use tools and technologies. This can vary from being the only person in the household who knows how operate the remote control to being the only person in an organisation who knows how to work the photo-copier; or access the online bank account. Nowadays, this has some challenging generational aspects to it.  Children tend to know more about how the computer works than their parents. Consequently, in these areas they can have more power. The parents may know how to set the safety controls on the smart phone. But children know how to subvert them. And keep it hidden. The Children’s Society tells us that 61% of children access certain social media accounts before the permitted age of 13.

4. Power derived from skills – the power that comes from having a unique and valuable gift. This is one step further than instrumental power. It might be the sort of power that can be exercised by a musician, a doctor or a professional footballer. It is the people who don’t just understand the algorithms that shape so much of how our society functions, they have the power to write them.

5. The power of communication – this is not just the ability to access and disseminate vital information, but the ability to charm, inspire and persuade. Some people have this gift in abundance, but not necessarily any others. It is dangerously seductive as well as absolutely vital. The greatest leaders (which I’m afraid include the greatest tyrants) usually had this power.

6. Coalitional power – the power that comes from being part of a significant group. This too can be horribly excluding and controlling, though when used wisely build fruitful and creative coalitions.

7. Power of sanctions – the power to be able to withdraw or threaten to withdraw vital support or resources.[vi] But also the power to provide them. This can be as simple as knowing the combination to a door lock. Or organising the labour, pay and conditions for hundreds of people.

These are all powers that various people exercise either on their own or in consort with others.[vii]

Marcus Goncalves in his essay on leadership styles observes that “the most successful leaders are capable of using most, if not all of these, simultaneously.”[viii]

However, I speak to you as a disciple of Jesus Christ and a theologian, not a leadership guru, so my question this evening is not merely how do we see Christ using these types of power, but what else do we see in Christ which adds to and critiques these categories? For what is immediately evident to me and I think of interest and relevance to others, whether they share the Christian faith or not, is not merely how Christ uses these types of power, but how he often elects to lay them aside. From a formal Christian, orthodox position of faith, Christ possesses huge and very significant formal and positional power. He is, after all, the Son of God. As the Incarnate Word, he has reputational and instrumental power. However, one of the earliest descriptions of the person of Christ in scripture uses the language of kenosis rather than power. The word kenosis means emptying. It is a theological term that is used to describe Christ. Sarah Coakley calls it  ‘power-in-vulnerability’[ix]: The key text is from Paul’s letter to the Philippians where he says that “though he was in the form of God, (he) did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.”[x] We will return to this, for although the word kenosis is only used once in scripture its meaning is disputed. It is usually assumed that Christ is laying aside the power that he possesses as the second person of the Trinity. But what, as Coakley argues, if this kenosis is not the temporary emptying out of power, but the revelation of a different sort of power which is now emptied into humanity, re-shaping all our understanding of power and authority?

In the same way we can acknowledge that Christ possessed great power of communication and skill. He built around him a strong coalition of like-minded followers. He was able to apply sanctions if he needed to. Yet, for those of you who know the Christian story, Jesus chooses to be silent before those who conspire against him.[xi] Almost all who follow him abandon him.[xii] Having extraordinary powers to heal the sick and raise the dead (he is the one of whom people say “even the winds and the sea obey him”[xiii]) when faced with his own trial and execution, and the terrifying hold of the powers that rage against him, he refuses to use the powers he has.[xiv]

This is not to say that Christ never deploys these types of power, far from it, but if, as we Christians believe, the ultimate revelation of God in Christ is found in his passion, death and resurrection (and if this is his supreme act of ‘leadership’ the means whereby we are reconciled to God), then it must be by examining how Christ exercises power in his passion and death that will be of most importance and relevance for any Christian understanding of power, influence and leadership. It is this that demonstrates what God’s power is actually like. Therefore, although we do not entirely leave these categories behind, we have to acknowledge their limitations. If they do not adequately describe the power that we see in Christ, how helpful can they be in describing how those who follow Christ and lead the church exercise power? And what else do they have to say to other leaders and organisations about exercising power differently?

When considering the actual power that we see in Christ, it seems to me that there are three types of power missing from this list. It is these powers that are distinctive to Christ and emblematic of the power of God emptied into Christ. I believe all three of these types of power are vital for healthy leadership and a healthy mutuality of leadership in any organisation or community.

 

1. The power of authenticity

Right at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5 – 7, when Jesus finishes speaking the crowds are amazed at his teaching, “because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law."[xv]

Although the crowds use the word ‘authority’, and in the context of St Matthews gospel it is based upon the entire sermon which “the reader can now judge for himself”[xvi] I believe this is best understood as referring to authenticity. What is different about Jesus’ teaching is not just the content, but the fact that what Jesus says aligns with who he is. So, for instance, the difficult teaching about going the second mile[xvii] and loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you[xviii] is lived out in the whole of his ministry and especially in his passion and death. In the words of Bill Hybels, what authenticity means is that there is “consistency between words and actions, and between claimed values and actual priorities.”[xix] James Lawrence persuasively argues that it is this authenticity, this alignment between what is said and what is done, between the narrative and the life lived, that made Jesus so attractive and drew people to him.[xx] Authenticity is the heart of effective leadership and one of the greatest sources of a power which liberates and heals. This authenticity, where what we say lines up with how we are, is one of the vital missing ingredients in much discourse about leadership. However, it is also the deeply attractive and immediately recognisable quality in the leaders, be they the person who runs a children’s football team on a Saturday morning or a Prime Minister, who almost instantly commands respect and trust.

Authenticity cannot be fabricated. But those things which work against authenticity can be rooted out, if the leader – and again by leader I mean anyone who exercises any sort of power – is prepared to submit themselves to those other spiritual disciplines which are central to the Christian life and more interestingly being rediscovered and rebranded in many other parts of life. So for prayerful waiting upon God to be in touch with ideas beyond yourself, read mindfulness. And for examination of conscience when we face up to our mistakes and failings and seek amendment of life, read counselling and therapy.

But it doesn’t much matter what we call these things. But these disciplines of reflection foster authenticity.

 

2. The power of undefended love

Following what was said earlier with regard to Sarah Coakley’s description of Christ’s ‘power in vulnerability’, we can follow her argument one step further by also discerning that the kenosis whereby Christ comes to us need not necessarily imply the “divesting of some clearly defined set of divine characteristics” that are shared with the God the Father[xxi], nor merely the “blueprint for a perfect human moral response”, but a revelation of the “humility of the divine nature”.[xxii] Quoting C.F.D. Moule, Coakley says that “Jesus displayed the self-giving humility which is the essence of divinity”.[xxiii]

This is quite an astonishing claim even for believers. Divinity is humble rather than powerful, or as I wish to describe it a power that comes from undefended love. This also means that we are most likely to see what Coakley calls “true divine empowerment”[xxiv] in the context of vulnerability. This does not mean that power no longer has any power, but that divine power is not, after all, that kind of power that we thought it was and which we would normally describe as powerful. Rather, it is an embodiment of the “strength made perfect in weakness” that Paul speaks about in the letters to the Corinthians.[xxv]

This kind of power is most evident on the cross. The passion and death of Christ is the triumph of love. The power of the cross in Christian thinking is not the power to overcome sin and evil by the exercise of greater strength or superior might, but the power of love to completely absorb and neutralise all that is thrown at it, even death itself. Hence, Christ forgives those who nail him to the cross.[xxvi] He reaches out to those who are crucified alongside him.[xxvii] He refuses to fight back. The crowds taunt him saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God.”[xxviii] But he is actually saving everyone, by losing himself. He is authentically walking the second mile of undefended love that he said should be the mark of his followers: denying themselves and taking up the cross each day.[xxix] The power to keep on loving when everyone else is full of wrath and hatred is the greatest power of all. It is the only way that hatred is defeated. It is the pattern of Christian discipleship and therefore the pattern for the Church’s leadership. But it also has something vital to say today to all leaders.

This sort of leadership is only bearable and only possible if the person who leads is clear about where their own affirmation comes from and is sustained and upheld by the knowledge that they too are loved. For Christ this affirmation came at his Baptism when the heavens open and God declares that Christ is the beloved, in whom God is well pleased.[xxx] Therefore the one who leads in ways that are undefended and vulnerable is the one who is contemplative, recognising the need for rest and refreshment, a person of prayer (or mindfulness) who knows that  time spent with God, and knowing oneself beloved, that is the wellspring of ministry and the “whole armour of God”.[xxxi]  Or if you don’t yet believe in God, time spent re-connecting with the values and ideas that are at the heat of what you in your lifetime and your organisation long to achieve.

Coakley describes contemplation as transformative. It is, she says, “a special form of ‘vulnerability’” which is “not an invitation to be battered; nor is its silence a silencing… By choosing to make a space in this way, one ‘practises the presence of God’ – the subtle enabling presence of a God who neither shouts nor obliterates”[xxxii]

She also points out that it is the simplest thing in the world not to contemplate, and adds that the world is often imperilled by unreflective leadership, and by those who only look at what they want to see. There is rather too much evidence of this sort of leadership in our world today! I will let you provide your own examples!

Simon Walker exhorts contemporary church leaders – and for me, by implication, all leaders - to be undefended. The sort of leader he describes is not a super hero, not a person beguiled or seduced by status, fame or riches, not busy or driven, but one who seeks the affirmation of God not the adulation of the world, and who sees in Christ’s undefended authenticity the model and pattern for all leadership. Such a person is able to discern real priorities and work with others for the common good. Decisively, because this leader is a contemplative who, like Christ, seeks time with God,[xxxiii] this sort of leader knows when to stop as well as when to start. This, more than anything, might be the vital lesson that the contemporary church and most contemporary organisations need to re-learn. Interestingly this year Covid has given us all more solitude than we want, but many of us have only responded by filling it up with something else, be it another zoom meeting or a Netflix series. However, it can be an invitation for the sort of contemplation that Coakley speaks of where we allow ourselves to be shaped and purposed by the values that are at the heat of what we are endeavouring and the affirmation that comes from being focused on this, and nothing else.

As Simon Walker puts it:

“Leadership has little to do with making lots of decisions, with getting a great deal done. It is about getting the right things done. As leaders, the crucial quality we need is the courage to stop. The courage to wait and be still. While everyone around is clamouring for a decision, the leader waits until she is confident and clear.”[xxxiv]

In the second book in his trilogy on undefended leadership Walker even refers to this as a “self-emptying strategy”[xxxv], that is a way of leading that does not vacate the space of leadership, but is able to stand there in openness and vulnerability, and where love is the only viable option and the greatest source of power.

 

3. The power of story 

I wasn’t sure what to call this section. I nearly gave it a grander title: the power of an embodied narrative, for in talking about story, especially the story of Christ and the way Christ used story, I want to emphasise again the point I was making above about kenosis and the power of undefended love. We see this in Christ, and we see this in lives made holy, changed and transformed by Christ. In this way a whole life becomes an embodied narrative. W. H. Auden makes this point beautifully in his landmark religious poem, In Praise of Limestone –

The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from/

Having nothing to hide.[xxxvi]

This transparent life, when we are the same person from every angle, is a life of enormous beauty and great power, though it will be the power of love etched into the transparency and agency of the life we live.

But I have stuck with calling it simply the power of story, for stories, and the imagination, vision and daring that is required to be a storyteller, are enormously powerful in shaping value and vision, and in changing the direction of a life or an organisation. In my own leadership I have always tried to be a storyteller and invited others to do the same. In sharing a vision, I have always sought to tell a story.

Writing about the incarnation, David Gitari, one of the great bishops of the East African Anglican Church has written that the incarnate Logos reveals  Christ’s divinity “not so much in mighty acts, though these were important, but in the revelation of divine glory through loving and humble service.”[xxxvii]  He goes on: “the essence of Christian revelation is that God has now spoken in his Son because Jesus Christ perfectly shows all that is knowable about the Father.”[xxxviii] In Christ, the incarnate Word, God tells his story in the only language we understand, the language of another human life. This life reveals perfectly what God is like, to have seen Jesus is to have seen the Father.[xxxix] It is the story of Christ that leads us to the source of power, Christ himself.

At a very basic level, we also note that Jesus told stories. His parables (which are riddles conundrums and puzzles as much as they are stories with beginnings and endings) are narratives which open up possibilities, challenge pre-conceived ideas, paint pictures of what life could be like, demand the listener to enter in. Meaning is rarely obvious or simple. There is no takeaway answer. The message and the messenger are one. You will have as many questions as answers. You need to keep listening and keep following. The vision is clear and beautiful; the way to get there demanding and transforming. The power is both in the story and the story–teller, but also in the way the listener becomes part of the story through their following and their openness to be transformed. The story itself and the storyteller (who is one in whom the story is embodied) is the source of power.

So let me tell you a story. In Greek mythology the story is told of the sirens whose enchanting and intoxicating music lured sailors onto the rocks where their boats were shipwrecked. Odysseus wanted to hear the music of the sirens so he ordered his men to tie him to the mast of the ship so that, no matter how beautiful the song, he would not steer the boat towards the music. Meanwhile he ordered his men to plug their ears with wax. However, when Jason sailed the same waters he took the great poet, singer and musician, Orpheus, with him. When they came within earshot of the sirens, Orpheus drew out his lyre and played a more beautiful song. Thus they were able to make safe passage.[xl]

For the Church of Jesus Christ, we believe that the music of the gospel is the more powerful song that drowns out the seductive and enticing siren voices of the world. The power of the gospel is not to stamp underfoot these principalities and powers, but by playing a more beautiful song – the music of love itself – deaden and neutralise its music.

Finally, we note that many of the great signs of Jesus’ ministry (particular the washing of the disciples’ feet, the Last Supper itself) can be best understood as acted parables: stories that convey the meaning and power of Christ himself, stories that we are called to learn from, enter into and emulate in our own (changed) lives. This is their power. Supremely, and as this lecture has been insisting, the greatest acted parable of all and the greatest revelation of the true source and nature of God’s power, is Christ’s death and resurrection. Thus we are able to concur with Paul, that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but those were being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1.18)

But even without the intense theological underpinning of this approach to power, let me quote at length, how Goncalves sees the same power of story as vital in the development of contemporary secular thinking about leadership –

“The new management paradigm… should… be quite simple; one that has been fuelling human beings for over 2,000 years and one that has proven to be effective with all cultures across the globe, and people of all ages, especially in times of extensive changes and chaos. Leaders will have to tap into the power of… imagination! In this new century, successful leaders will have to become storytellers. Not only are we seduced by stories (that’s why we like books, movies and theatre), but we must invariably place stories above price and quality. We often justify a lack of or excess of those attributes with stories. We always have a story for why we must pay the high cost for a Starbucks coffee, or for a high-priced Apple computer, for a higher cost FedEx shipment or skyrocketing tuitions at colleges and universities. Yet, all the organizations listed above have leaders that knew how to tell their story, not only to their peers and subordinates, but also to the public, thereby becoming somewhat of a celebrity in the process. Therefore, it is my belief that today’s leaders must possess the power of storytelling. I’m not about to advocate an eighth type of power (actually, why not?), but to convey, at least for the time being, that the power of charisma, along with the power of information should be the predominant types of power leaders should master. No longer do legitimate and coercive powers hold the edge. On the contrary, in a business world full of deceit and greed, unless leaders have a good story to tell, no one will be willing to follow.”[xli]

Well, I am advocating an eighth type of power – and a ninth and a tenth: the power of authenticity; the power of undefended love; and the power of story. In fact, it is these three types of power, the ones we see so clearly in Christ, that should be the starting point for any Christian discussion of power and how that is exercised within the ministry of the Church. And if you will forgive me for addressing directly some of the immediate challenges facing the church that have been revealed by the recently published Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, it is the power of authenticity and undefended love that will be most likely to change a culture that has at best been complacent about abuse and at worst collusive with abusers, more concerned with its own reputation than justice for those who have been so deeply hurt.

But this will also be true, as Goncalves, articulates, for every organisation. We need to think about power differently.

 

Conclusion

There is no love in the seven types of power identified by French and Raven. They can be exercised in ways that are compassionate and loving (and we certainly see this exemplified by Christ) but love itself, and the supreme power of self-giving love, is missing. Moreover, Jesus never used his power to impose his will upon anyone.[xlii] The power of love is always an invitation (even if its compelling force feels like a summons).

In all walks of life, we know love to be the greatest power of all. On the night before he died Jesus commanded his disciples to love one another and to love others in the same way that he had loved them.[xliii] This was how they would change the world. He not only said that there was no greater love than to lay down one’s life for his friends.[xliv] He showed them what this sort of love looked like.

It seems strange that most contemporary, secular thinking about power and leadership neglects to consider the power of love, or the actual dynamics of how love empowers and directs through the authentic vulnerability of self-giving. It is inexplicable that Christian discourse on leadership and power should make the same mistake. I hope in this lecture to have opened up what I believe could be a fruitful area for new research and thinking. It enables us to concur with Julian of Norwich whose own profound reflections on the passion of Christ enabled her, nearly 700 years ago, to conclude: “Love was his meaning.”[xlv]