Diversity and Incarnational Leadership

In a recent post on her blog Tribal Church, Carol Howard Merritt raised concerns about the relative lack of diversity among church leadership.  As a child of the evangelical movement who has found a home in the oldline, she's particularly troubled by the lack of women's voices in the church.  She's also troubled by the cultural homogeneity in the church.  I feel that, and it's a good issue to raise.

We Jesus People, being people, are really rather craptacular at selecting leadership that doesn't look like us or sound like us.  If a pastor doesn't affirm what a church already knows, they won't want that person as a leader.  I understand how repressive this can be to those who aren't viewed as leadership material by a dominant culture.   But I also struggle with how effective leadership can be possible if a leader doesn't represent a community.

Take the church I'm serving.  I like folks here.  I really do.  They're good people.  But I am..well..different, different enough that it impedes my ability to be effective.  There's the surface level stuff, of course.  This Sunday, I took a gander around the room as the worship gathered steam.  About 10 minutes in, I was the only non-Asian in attendance.  That, frankly, didn't bug me.  Never has. Most of the time, I don't even notice it. 

More significant, though, are the expectations of a community formed by the experience of being second generation Asian Americans.   The family-tight bonds forged in a Korean church youth group are a powerful thing, one I can appreciate conceptually, but just isn't the way I do church.  The theology of folks coming out of a conservative and evangelical tradition just isn't mine, either.  There are powerful commonalities around Christ, sure.  The bonds of faith and the Spirit are shared.  I can worship and laugh and enjoy the company of brothers and sisters in Christ.  But the way I express my faith just doesn't articulate community enough for me to work as a leader.   As I've conveyed to the cadre of young folks at my church with some real sadness, I'm just not a good match.

To be effective, I'm convinced that leadership needs to manifest the essence of a community.  It's a bit like worship that way.  Good, moving worship is contextual and incarnational, expressing the musical and liturgical sensibilities of a particular gathered body.  It's part of a shared identity.  Similarly, a congregation will seek a leader who visibly manifests and personifies their identity as a fellowship.

The issue here, though, is that such leadership does not really challenge a community to make changes.  If there are systemic injustices, the incarnational leader will not address them.  If there are systemic failings, the incarnational leader will often embody them.

Incarnational leaders aren't prophets.  They can be agents of growth, but they aren't agents of transformation.  There's a huge difference...and that's a problem for churches as human institutions.

Westboro Baptist Church is Good For America

Today, the Supreme Court begins considering Snyder v. Phelps, the case of the father of a slain veteran who is suing the insular and legendary Westboro Baptist Church.  He accuses them of inflicting emotional harm on him and his family by engaging in one of their trademarked anti-gay demonstrations during the funeral of his son.

Though it's a bit painful, because I understand the depth of that father's suffering,  I tend to side with the Phelps clan in this, for two reasons.  First, I think "offense" is a dangerous precedent to set as a metric for restricting free speech.  Here, we're not talking physical assault, physical disruption, or trespassing.  We're talking demonstrating within the bounds of legality.

Let's say, for instance, that I am demonstrating against a war which I believe is unjustified.  If my actions give offense to someone who supports that war, should they be restricted?  In the United States, the answer is no.  Or has been.   And must still be. 

Second, and more significant, I think Fred Phelps and his feverish brood are instruments in the hand of God.  Their brand of prophetic performance art has made them known worldwide, and for good reason.  They have a powerful unifying impact on every single community they enter.  As they sing their brilliantly simple offensive songs and wave their iconic offensive signs, they remind us of the most important values of this nation and of Christian faith, of our tolerance and mutual forbearance.   I watched this at work myself, as I provided a Christian witness in counterprotesting them when they came to do their thing at my local high school.   Rarely have I felt such a sense of unity, or seen young people so willing to embrace the essence of the Gospel....to the point of holding up signs provided by a complete stranger. 

I'll go further.  No single ministry in the United States has done more to further the acceptance of gays and lesbians by our broader culture.  Listening to their carefully scripted hate, we're reminded of the divisive fulmination on the far right about gays and lesbians and culture wars.  As the Phelps take this fulmination to its logical extreme, their actions remind us that this is not something any of us really believe.

If a troupe of radical progressive Christian performance artists were looking to find a way to shock America into doing a gut check about who we are and what we believe, and to open us to being tolerant of gays and lesbians as fellow human beings and citizens, you couldn't do a better job than the Phelpses.  If you were looking for a way to remind Christianity that no matter what its political or theological leanings, it needs to manifest grace in everything it does, well, they pretty much rock that one too.  Westboro Baptist is a powerful, powerful social justice ministry.

For that, they deserve our thanks, and the permission of a free society to continue to annoy us into being our better selves.