Outside Reading
December 1, 2016
Henri Nouwen in his book In the Name of Jesus writes about some
of his thoughts on Christian leadership while taking the reader through his
journey from being a professor of theology and psychology to working at L’Arche
community for the mentally handicapped. In the first chapter of his book, he
writes about how leaders in the church do not need to be relevant but they do
need to know the heart of Jesus. The
Christian does not have an identity that waivers, that conforms to each
generation or cultural setting. The Christian has an identity that is created
by God and that is steadfast. Nouwen writes that, “the Christian leader of the
future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with
nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self” (17). I wonder if the
academic world sometimes hides behind scholarly research and theories and
avoids talking to real people. Hard truths are easy to tell in a classroom. It
is easy to talk about depravity and injustice and the stratification of social
classes but what is the meaning that comes from those conversations. I wonder
if human beings are more relational than we think and hard truths may only hit
if they are delivered individually, in the context of this relationship. Why
else would God become a man and spend his ministry talking with a group of
twelve guys? We should be vulnerable because Jesus was vulnerable and his love
changed the course of history forever.
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