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CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) AND SCSBC’S RESPONSE: Find the lastest updates here for students, faculty and staff.
I have been reflecting lately on the life and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, especially the moral leadership he embodied. His example has made me think about the challenge school leaders face in being strategic: we need to cast vision, implement change, manage conflict, communicate clearly, and make difficult decisions. But as followers of Jesus, how do we ensure that our strategic leadership remains rooted in a deeper calling—to do the right thing for the sake of the kingdom? How do we become not simply effective leaders, but moral leaders?
Before we get to Bonhoeffer, let me back up and explain what I mean by “strategic leadership” and why that matters when we place too much emphasis on strategy.
In the early twentieth century, thinkers such as Max Weber and, later, members of the Frankfurt School examined how rationality and bureaucracy could become detached from questions of human flourishing. Weber described a form of rationality concerned primarily with finding the most effective means to achieve a desired end. The question becomes not “Is this action good?” but “Will this work?”
The alternative is what Weber called value-rational action: choosing a course of action because it reflects a value that is worthwhile in itself. The distinction is important. Instrumental rationality asks whether our actions will achieve the goal. Value rationality asks whether the actions themselves are good, right, or worthwhile.
Strategic thinking is essential to leadership. We need to be strategic in how we cast vision, implement change, manage conflict, communicate new ideas, and solve problems. The risk comes when we become so strategic, so focused on achieving the desired outcome, that we begin to sacrifice small pieces of integrity, honesty, empathy, or authenticity along the way.
Think of highly strategic leaders you have known. They may have been very successful at achieving their goals, but did the people around them flourish? I can think of several highly strategic leaders, and when I reflect on their leadership, I realize that I engage them with a certain level of guardedness. When someone is exceptionally strategic, there can be a nagging question about authenticity. When they show care for you, are they simply showing care, or are they doing it as a means to another end? When they are vulnerable, are they being vulnerable for its own sake, or are they using vulnerability as a tool to build buy-in and trust?
Consider the leader who makes a very public apology but never takes the time to sit with the person who was hurt and seek to make things right. Or consider the public expressions of support for a cause that never translate into the person’s actual way of living. In these situations, there is a risk that our actions become performative rather than authentic. The action itself is no longer the point; it has become a means to some other end.
So, in the call to be strategic leaders, how do we guard against the temptation of instrumental rationality? How do we prevent ourselves from becoming so focused on the end goal that we employ increasingly effective strategies to achieve it without a deep concern for the people involved?
Let’s go back to Bonhoeffer for some answers.
Bonhoeffer’s life and work remind us that Christian leadership is about more than having the right beliefs or achieving the right outcomes. It is about faithful discipleship. In this, I think Bonhoeffer shared something important with his intellectual forerunner, Søren Kierkegaard. Both challenged Christians to place faithful obedience to Christ ahead of cultural, institutional, or political loyalties.
I would suggest that Bonhoeffer’s moral clarity was rooted in his submission to God through three closely connected means: Scripture, the community of faith, and the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We can see these themes in a passage from Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson’s The Cost of Moral Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
Following Jesus is, in Bonhoeffer’s theology, more than mere orthodoxy. It is doing the right thing under the tacit, steady guidance of God’s Word and Spirit conjoined. It is not that in each instance of Christian action to achieve peace and justice the follower of Jesus Christ must consciously tell themselves, “I do this because God’s Holy Spirit commands it.” The Holy Spirit’s way is to embody itself in the person of faith and in the spirit of the church community. The movements of the Holy Spirit are subtle, gentle, forceful, persuasive, compelling, and, if so, willed by God, irresistible.
Can you see those three areas of submission?
Bonhoeffer believed followers of Jesus are called to submit to Scripture, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the discernment of the Christian community. I believe our best safeguard against reducing leadership to instrumental rationality is humble submission.
It takes courage and humility to open Scripture and invite the Spirit to convict us, surprise us, inspire us, and change us. It takes courage and humility to join a community of faith and fully participate in the awkwardness and wonder of the body of Christ, even when we are not perfect and do not agree with one another on everything. And it takes courage and humility to create space in our lives for quiet prayer, seeking the presence of God and allowing ourselves to hear the Spirit’s still, small voice above the noise of our busy schedules and our own egos.
In Exodus 33, God calls Moses to lead His people, and he asks who God will send with him. God responds that His own presence will go with Moses. Moses then says that if God’s presence does not go with them, there is no point in going. How else will they be distinguished from “all the other people on the face of the earth” (v. 16)?
I think there is something important here for Christian leaders. If our leadership is to be shaped by the moral faithfulness we see in Bonhoeffer, it cannot be merely strategic. It needs to be led by the Spirit. Like Moses, we need to earnestly seek God’s presence and have the humility to recognize that, without it, we may achieve our goals while missing the real work of the kingdom.
We risk becoming like all the other leaders of the earth.
This year, I am challenging myself not to take on more or achieve more, but instead earnestly seek the presence of God, through what Bonhoeffer and Scripture seem to point us toward: God’s Word, the community of the saints, and the creation of space to hear and see the Spirit calling us forward.
Because being part of the movement of the Spirit is not simply a means to achieving something else. It is itself part of the life we were made for.
Dave Loewen
SCSBC Executive Director
